- 
i  m 


Hii 

•-•;•    ' 


HISTORY 


OF 


OTJE    OWN   TIMES 


FROM  THE  ACCESSION  OF  QUEEN  VICTORIA   TO 
THE  BERLIN  CONGRESS 


BY    JUSTIN    McCAKTHY 

AUTHOR  OF  "THK  WATERDALE  NEIGHBORS"  "MT  ENEMY'S  DAUGHTER"  ETC. 


IN     TWO    VOLUMES 
VOL.   I. 


NEW    YORK 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS,    PUBLISHERS 

FRANKLIN     SQUARE 

1880 


I/J 


CONTENTS  OF  VOL  I. 


CHAPTER  I.  PAGE 

THE  KING  is  DEAD  !   LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN  ! 5 

CHAPTER  II. 
STATESMEN  AND  PARTIES 21 

CHAPTER  III. 
CANADA  AND  LOUD  DURHAM 36 

CHAPTER  IV. 
SCIENCE  AND  SPEED 58 

CHAPTER  V. 
CHARTISM 70 

CHAPTER  VI. 
QUESTION  DE  JUPONS 88 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE 98 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
THE  OPIUM  WAR 112 

CHAPTER  IX. 
DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  WHIG  MINISTRY 124 

CHAPTER  X. 
MOVEMENTS  IN  THE  CHURCHES 139 

CHAPTER  XI. 
THE  DISASTERS  OF  CABUL 151 

CHAPTER  XII. 
THE  REPEAL  YEAR 182 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION   .  .  203 


4  CONTENTS  OF  VOL.  I. 

CHAPTER  XIV.  PACE 

FREE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE 216 

CHAPTER  XV. 
FAMINE  FORCES  PEEL'S  HAND 240 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
MR.  DISRAELI 25G 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  AND  FOREIGN  INTRIGUE   ....  275 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND 291 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
DON  PACIFICO 317 

CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL ".     .  339 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
THE  EXHIBITION  IN  HYDE  PARK .  358 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
PALMERSTON  .• 371 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
BIRTH  OF  THE  EMPIRE;  DEATH  OF  "THE  DUKE" 399 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
MR.  GLADSTONE 423 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
THE  EASTERN  QUESTION , 433 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 
WHERE  WAS  LORD  PALMERSTON  ? 462 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 
THK  INVASION  OF  THE  CRIMEA 485 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  WAR 505 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 
THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  REIGN.     FIRST  SURVEY 524 


A  HISTORY 


OF 


OUR   OWIST   TIMES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    KING   IS    DEAD  !     LONG   LIVE   THE    QUEEN  ! 

BEFORE  half-past  two  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  June  20th, 
1837,  William  IV.  was  lying  dead  in  Windsor  Castle,  while 
the  messengers  were  already  hurrying  off  to  Kensington 
Palace  to  bear  to  his  successor  her  summons  to  the  throne. 
The  illness  of  the  King  had  been  but  shart,  and  at  one  time, 
even  after  it  had  been  pronounced  alarming,  it  seemed  to 
take  so  hopeful  a  turn  that  the  physicians  began  to  think  it 
would  pass  harmlessly  away.  But  the  King  was  an  old  man 
— was  an  old  man  even  when  he  came  to  the  throne: — and 
when  the  dangerous  symptoms  again  exhibited  themselves, 
their  warning  was  very  soon  followed  by  fulfilment.  The 
death  of  King  William  may  be  fairly  regarded  as  having 
closed  an  era  of  our  history.  With  him,  we  may  believe, 
ended,  the  reign  of  personal  government  in  England.  Wil- 
liam was,  indeed,  a  constitutional  king  in  more  than  mere 
name.  He  was  to  the  best  of  his  lights  a  faithful  represent- 
ative of  the  constitutional  principle.  He  was  as  far  in  ad- 
vance of  his  two  predecessors  in  understanding  and  accept- 
ance of  the  principle  as  his  successor  has  proved  herself  be- 
yond him.  Constitutional  government  has  developed  itself 
gradually,  as  everything  else  has  done  in  English  politics. 
The  written  principle  and  code  of  its  system  it  would  be  as 
vain  to  look  for  as  for  the  British  Constitution  itself.  King 
William  still  held  to  and  exercised  the  right  to  dismiss  his 
ministers  when  he  pleased,  and  because  he  pleased.  His  fa- 


6  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

ther  had  held  to  the  right  of  maintaining  favorite  ministers 
in  defiance  of  repeated  votes  of  the  House  of  Commons.  It 
would  not  be  easy  to  find  any  written  rule  or  declaration  of 
constitutional  law  pronouncing  decisively  that  either  was  in 
the  wrong.  But  in  our  day  we  should  believe  that  the  con- 
stitutional freedom  of  England  was  outraged,  or  at  least  put 
in  the  extremest  danger,  if  a  sovereign  were  to  dismiss  a 

O          7  O 

ministry  at  mere  pleasure,  or  to  retain  it  in  spite  of  the  ex- 
pressed wish  of  the  House  of  Commons.  Virtually,  there- 
fore, there  was  still  personal  government  in  the  reign  of 
William  IV.  With  his  death  the  long  chapter  of  its  history 
came  to  an  end.  We  find  it  difficult  now  to  believe  that  it 
was  a  living  principle,  openly  at  work  among  us,  if  not  open- 
ly acknowledged,  so  lately  as  in  the  reign  of  King  William. 
The  closing  scenes  of  King  William's  life  were  undoubted- 
ly characterized  by  some  personal  dignity.  As  a  rule,  sover- 
eigns show  that  they  know  how  to  die.  Perhaps  the  neces- 
sary consequence  of  their  training,  by  virtue  of  which  they 
come  to  regard  themselves  always  as  the  central  figures  in 
great  State  pageantry,  is  to  make  them  assume  a  manner  of 
dignity  on  all  occasions  when  the  eyes  of  their  subjects  may 
be  supposed  to  be  on  them,  even  if  the  dignity  of  bearing  is 
not  the  free  gift  of  nature.  The  manners  of  William  IV. 
had  been,  like  those  of  most  of  his  brothers,  somewhat  rough 
and  overbearing.  He  had  been  an  unmanageable  naval 
officer.  He  had  again  and  again  disregarded  or  disobeyed 
orders,  and  at'  last  it  had  been  found  convenient  to  with- 
draw him  from  active  service  altogether,  and  allow  him  to 
rise  through  the  successive  ranks  of  his  profession  by  a 
merely  formal  and  technical  process  of  ascent.  In  his  moi'e 
private  capacity  he  had,  when  younger,  indulged  more  than 
once  in  unseemly  and  insufferable  freaks  of  temper.  He 
had  made  himself  unpopular,  while  Duke  of  Clarence,  by  his 
strenuous  opposition  to  some  of  the  measures  which  were 
especially  desired  by  all  the  enlightenment  of  the  country. 
He  was,  for  example,  a  determined  opponent  of  the  meas- 
ures for  the  abolition  of  the  slave-trade.  He  had  wrangled 
publicly,  in  open  debate,  with  some  of  his  brothers  in  the 
House  of  Lords ;  and  words  had  been  interchanged  among 
the  royal  princes  which  could  not  be  heard  in  our  day  even 
in  the  hottest  debates  of  the  more  turbulent  House  of  Com- 


THE  KING  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!        7 

mons.  But  William  seems  to  have  been  one  of  the  men 
whom  increased  responsibility  improves.  He  was  far  bet- 
ter as  a  king  than  as  a  prince.  He  proved  that  he  was  able 
at  least  to  understand  that  first  duty  of  a  constitutional  sov- 
ereign which,  to  the  last  day  of  his  active  life,  his  father, 
George  III.,  never  could  be  brought  to  comprehend — that 
the  personal  predilections  and  prejudices  of  the  King  must 
sometimes  give  way  to  the  public  interest. 

Nothing  perhaps  in  life  became  him  like  to  the  leaving  of 
it.  His  closing  days  were  marked  by  gentleness  and  kindly 
consideration  for  the  feelings  of  those  around  him.  When 
he  awoke  on  June  18th  he  remembered  that  it  was  the  anni- 
versary of  the  battle  of  Waterloo.  He  expressed  a  strong 
pathetic  wish  to  live  over  that  day,  even  if  he  were  never  to 
see  another  sunset.  He  called  for  the  flag  which  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  always  sent  him  on  that  anniversary,  and  he 
laid  his  hand  upon  the  eagle  which  adorned  it,  and  said  he 
felt  revived  by  the  touch.  He  had  himself  attended,  since 
his  accession,  the  Waterloo  banquet ;  but  this  time  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  thought  it  would  perhaps  be  more  seemly  to 
have  the  dinner  put  off,  and  sent  accordingly  to  take  the 
wishes  of  his  Majesty.  The  King  declared  that  the  dinner 
must  go  on  as  usual,  and  sent  to  the  Duke  a  friendly,  simple 
message  expressing  his  hope  that  the  guests  might  have  a 
pleasant  day.  He  talked  in  his  homely  way  to  those  about 
him,  his  direct  language  seeming  to  acquire  a  sort  of  tragic 
dignity  from  the  approach  of  the  death  that  was  so  near. 
He  had  prayers  read  to  him  again  and  again,  and  called 
those  near  him  to  witness  that  he  had  always  been  a  faith- 
ful believer  in  the  truths  of  religion.  He  had  his  despatch- 
boxes  brought  to  him,  and  tried  to  get  through  some  busi- 
ness with  his  private  secretary.  It  was  remarked  with  some 
interest  that  the  last  official  act  he  ever  performed  was  to 
sign  with  his  trembling  hand  the  pardon  of  a  condemned 
criminal.  Even  a  far  nobler  reign  than  his  would  have  re- 
ceived new  dignity  if  it  closed  with  a  deed  of  mercy. 
When  some  of  those  around  him  endeavored  to  encourage 
him  with  the  idea  that  he  might  recover  and  live  many 
years  yet,  he  declared,  with  a  simplicity  which  had  some- 
thing oddly  pathetic  in  it,  that  he  would  be  willing  to  live 
ten  years  yet  for  the  sake  of  the  country.  The  poor  King 


8  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

was  evidently  under  the  sincere  conviction  that  England 
could  hardly  get  on  without  him.  His  consideration  for  his 
country,  whatever  whimsical  thoughts  it  may  suggest,  is  en- 
titled to  some,  at  least,  of  the  respect  which  we  give  to  the 
dying  groan  of  a  Pitt  or  a  Mirabeau,  who  fears  with  too 
much  reason  that  he  leaves  a  blank  not  easily  to  be  filled. 
"Young  royal  tarry -b reeks"  William  had  been  jocularly 
called  by  Robert  Burns  fifty  years  before,  when  there  was 
yet  a  popular  belief  that  he  would  come  all  right  and  do 
brilliant  and  gallant  things,  and  become  a  stout  sailor  in 
whom  a  seafaring  nation  might  feel  pride.  He  disappoint- 
ed all  such  expectations ;  but  it  must  be  owned  that  when 
responsibility  came  upon  him  he  disappointed  expectation 
anew  in  a  different  way,  and  was  a  better  sovereign,  more 
deserving  of  the  complimentary  title  of  patriot -king,  than 
even  his  friends  would  have  ventured  to  anticipate. 

There  were  eulogies  pronounced  upon  him  after  his  death 
in  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  is 
not  necessary,  however,  to  set  down  to  mere  court  homage 
or  parliamentary  form  some  of  the  praises  that  were  be- 
stowed on  the  dead  King  by  Lord  Melbourne  and  Lord 
Brougham  and  Lord  Grey.  A  certain  tone  of  sincerity,  not 
quite  free,  perhaps,  from  surprise,  appears  to  run  through 
some  of  these  expressions  of  admiration.  They  seem  to  say 
that  the  speakers  were  at  one  time  or  another  considerably 
surprised  to  find  that,  after  all,  William  really  was  able  and 
willing  on  grave  occasions  to  subordinate  his  personal  lik- 
ings and  dislikings  to  considerations  of  State  policy,  and  to 
what  was  shown  to  him  to  be  for  the  good  of  the  nation. 
In  this  sense  at  least  he  may  be  called  a  patriot-king.  We 
have  advanced  a  good  deal  since  that  time,  and  we  require 
somewhat  higher  and  more  positive  qualities  in  a  sovereign 
now  to  excite  our  political  wonder.  But  we  must  judge 
William  by  the  reigns  that  went  before,  and  not  the  reign 
that  came  after  him  ;  and,  with  that  consideration  borne  in 
mind,  we  may  accept  the  panegyric  of  Lord  Melbourne  and 
of  Lord  Grey,  and  admit  that  on  the  whole  he  was  better 
than  his  education,  his  early  opportunities,  and  his  early 
promise. 

William  IV.  (third  son  of  George  III.)  had  left  no  children 
who  could  have  succeeded  to  the  throne,  and  the  crown 


THE  KING-  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!        9 

passed,  therefore,  to  the  daughter  of  his  brother  (fourth  son 
of  George),  the  Duke  of  Kent.  This  was  the  Princess  Al- 
exandrina  Victoria,  who  was  born  at  Kensington  Palace  on 
May  24th,  1819.  The  Princess  was,  therefore,  at  this  time  lit- 
tle more  than  eighteen  years  of  age.  The  Duke  of  Kent  died 
a  few  months  after  the  birth  of  his  daughter,  and  the  child 
was  brought  up  under  the  care  of  his  widow.  She  was  well 
brought  up :  both  as  regards  her  intellect  and  her  character 
her  training  was  excellent.  She  was  taught  to  be  self-reli- 
ant, brave,  and  systematical.  Prudence  and  economy  were 
inculcated  on  her  as  though  she  had  been  born  to  be  poor. 
One  is  not  generally  inclined  to  attach  much  importance 
to  what  historians  tell  us  of  the  education  of  contempora- 
ry princes  or  pi'incesses;  but  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the 
Princess  Victoi'ia  was  trained  for  intelligence  and  goodness. 
"The  death  of  the  King  of  England  has  everywhere 
caused  the  greatest  sensation.  .  .  .  Cousin  Victoria  is  said 
to  have  shown  astonishing  self-possession.  She  undertakes 
a  heav)''  responsibility,  especially  at  the  present  moment, 
when  parties  are  so  excited,  and  all  rest  their  hopes  on  her." 
These  words  are  an  extract  from  a  letter  written  on  July 
4th,  1837,  by  the  late  Prince  Albert,  the  Prince  Consort  of  so 
many  happy  years.  The  letter  was  written  to  the  Prince's 
father,  from  Bonn.  The  young  Queen  had,  indeed,  behaved 
with  remarkable  self-possession.  There  is  a  pretty  descrip- 
tion, which  has  been  often  quoted,  but  will  bear  citing  once 
more,  given  by  Miss  Wynn,  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
young  sovereign  received  the  news  of  her  accession  to  a 
throne.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Dr.  Plowley,  and 
the  Lord  Chamberlain,  the  Marquis  of  Conyngham,  left  Wind- 
sor for  Kensington  Palace,  where  the  Princess  Victoria  had 
been  residing,  to  inform  her  of  the  King's  death.  It  was 
two  hours  after  midnight  when  they  started,  and  they  did 
not  reach  Kensington  until  five  o'clock  in  the  morning. 

w3  O 

"They  knocked,  they  rang,  they  thumped  for  a  considerable 
time  before  they  could  rouse  the  porter  at  the  gate ;  they 
were  again  kept  waiting  in  the  court-yard,  then  turned  into 
one  of  the  lower  rooms,  where  they  seemed  forgotten  by  ev- 
erybody. They  rang  the  bell,  and  desired  that  the  attend- 
ant of  the  Princess  Victoria  might  be  sent  to  inform  her 
Royal  Highness  that  they  requested  an  audience  on  business 

1* 


10  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

of  importance.  After  another  delay,  and  another  ringing  to 
inquire  the  cause,  the  attendant  was  summoned,  who  stated 
that  the  Princess  was  in  such  a  sweet  sleep  that  she  could 
not  venture  to  disturb  her.  Then  they  said,  "  We  are  come 
on  business  of  state  to  the  Queen,  and  even  her  sleep  must 
give  way  to  that."  It  did ;  and  to  prove  that  she  did  not 
keep  them  waiting,  in  a  few  minutes  she  came  into  the  room 
in  a  loose  white  night-gown  and  shawl,  her  nightcap  thrown 
off,  and  her  hair  falling  upon  her  shoulders,  her  feet  in  slip- 
pers, tears  in  her  eyes,  but  perfectly  collected  and  dignified." 
The  Prime-minister,  Lord  Melbourne,  was  presently  sent  for, 
and  a  meeting  of  the  privy  council  summoned  for  eleven 
o'clock,  when  the  Lord  Chancellor  administei'ed  the  usual 
oaths  to  the  Queen,  and  her  Majesty  received  in  return  the 
oaths  of  allegiance  of  the  cabinet  ministers  and  other  privy 
councillors  present.  Mr.  Greville,  who  was  usually  as  little 
disposed  to  record  any  enthusiastic  admiration  of  royalty 
and  royal  personages  as  Humboldt  or  Varnhagen  von  Ense 
could  have  been,  has  described  the  scene  in  words  well 
worthy  of  quotation: 

"The  King  died  at  twenty  minutes  after  two  yesterday 
morning,  and  the  young  Queen  met  the  council  at  Kensing- 
ton Palace  at  eleven.  Never  was  anything  like  the  first 
impression  she  produced,  or  the  chorus  of  praise  and  ad- 
miration which  is  raised  about  her  manner  and  behavior, 
and  certainly  not  without  justice.  It  was  very  extraordi- 
nary, and  something  far  beyond  what  was  looked  for.  Her 
extreme  youth  and  inexperience,  and  the  ignorance  of  the 
world  concerning  her,  naturally  excited  intense  curiosity  to 
see  how  she  would  act  on  this  trying  occasion,  and  there 
was  a  considerable  assemblage  at  the  palace,  notwithstand- 
ing the  short  notice  which  was  given.  The  first  thing  to 
be  done  was  to  teach  her  her  lesson,  which,  for  this  purpose, 
Melbourne  had  himself  to  learn.  .  .  .  She  bowed  to  the 
lords,  took  her  seat,  and  then  read  her  speech  in  a  clear,  dis- 
tinct, and  audible  voice,  and  without  any  appearance  of 
fear  or  embarrassment.  She  was  quite  plainly  dressed,  and 
in  mourning.  After  she  had  read  her  speech,  and  taken  and 
signed  the  oath  for  the  security  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 
the  privy  councillors  were  sworn,  the  two  royal  dukes  first 
by  themselves;  and  as  these  two  old  men,  her  uncles,  knelt 


THE   KING  IS   DEAD  !    LONG  LIVE  THE   QUEEN  !         11 

before  her,  swearing  allegiance  and  kissing  her  hand,  I  saw 
her  blush  up  to  the  eyes,  as  if  she  felt  the  contrast  between 
their  civil  and  their  natural  relations,  and  this  was  the  only 
sign  of  emotion  which  she  evinced.  Her  manner  to  them 
was  very  graceful  and  engaging ;  she  kissed  them  both,  and 
rose  from  her  chair  and  moved  toward  the  Duke  of  Sussex, 
who  was  farthest  from  her,  and  too  infirm  to  reach  her.  She 
seemed  rather  bewildered  at  the  multitude  of  men  who  were 
sworn,  and  who  came,  one  after  another,  to  kiss  her  hand, 
but  she  did  not  speak  to  anybody,  nor  did  she  make  the 
slightest  difference  in  her  manner,  or  show  any  in  her  coun- 
tenance, to  any  individual  of  any  rank,  station,  or  party.  I 
particularly  watched  her  when  Melbourne  and  the  ministers, 
and  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Peel  approached  her.  She 
went  through  the  whole  ceremony,  occasionally  looking  at 
Melbourne  for  instruction  when  she  had  any  doubt  what  to 
do,  which  hardly  ever  occurred,  and  with  perfect  calmness 
and  self-possession,  but  at  the  same  time  with  a  graceful 
modesty  and  propriety  particularly  interesting  and  ingra- 
tiating." 

Sir  Robert  Peel  told  Mr.  Greville  that  he  was  amazed  at 
"  her  manner  and  behavior,  at  her  apparent  deep  sense  of 
her  situation,  and  at  the  same  time  her  firmness."  The 
Duke  of  Wellington  said  in  his  blunt  way  that  if  she  had 
been  his  own  daughter  he  could  not  have  desired  to  see  her 
perform  her  part  better.  "At  twelve,"  says  Mr.  Greville, 
"  she  held  a  council,  at  which  she  presided  with  as  much 
ease  as  if  she  had  been  doing  nothing  else  all  her  life ;  and 
though  Lord  Lansdowne  and  my  colleague  had  contrived, 
between  them,  to  make  some  confusion  with  the  council  pa- 
pers, she  was  not  put  out  by  it.  She  looked  very  well ;  and 
though  so  small  in  stature,  and  without  much  pretension  to 
beauty,  the  gracefulness  of  her  manner  and  the  good  ex- 
pression of  her  countenance  give  her,  on  the  whole,  a  very 
agreeable  appearance,  and,  with  her  youth,  inspire  an  exces- 
sive interest  in  all  who  approach  her,  and  which  I  can't  help 
feeling  myself.  ...  In  short,  she  appears  to  act  with  every 
sort  of  good  taste  and  good  feeling,  as  well  as  good  sense ; 
and,  as  far  as  it  has  gone,  nothing  can  be  more  favorable 
than  the  impression  she  has  made,  and  nothing  can  promise 
better  than  her  manner  and  conduct  do;  though,"  Mr.  Gre- 


12  A   HISTORY   OF   OUE   OWN   TIMES. 

ville  somewhat  superfluously  adds,  "it  would  be  rash  to 
count  too  confidently  upon  her  judgment  and  discretion  in 
more  weighty  matters." 

The  interest  or  curiosity  with  which  the  demeanor  of  the 
young  Queen  was  watched  was  all  the  keener  because  the 
world  in  general  knew  so  little  about  her.  Not  merely  was 
the  world  in  general  thus  ignorant,  but  even  the  statesmen 
and  officials  in  closest  communication  with  court  circles  were 
in  almost  absolute  ignorance.  According  to  Mr.  Greville, 
whose  authority,  however,  is  not  to  be  taken  too  implicitly 
except  as  to  matters  which  he  actually  saw,  the  young  Queen 
had  been  previously  kept  in  such  seclusion  by  her  mother 
— "never,"  he  says,  "having  slept  out  of  her  bedroom,  nor 
been  alone  with  anybody  but  herself  and  the  Baroness  Leh- 
zen" — that  "not  one  of  her  acquaintance,  none  of  the  at- 
tendants at  Kensington,  not  even  the  Duchess  of  Northum- 
berland, her  governess,  have  any  idea  what  she  is  or  what 
she  promises  to  be."  There  was  enough  in  the  court  of  the 
two  sovereigns  who  went  before  Queen  Victoria  to  justify 
any  strictness  of  seclusion  which  the  Duchess  of  Kent  might 
desire  for  her  daughter.  George  IV.  was  a  Charles  II.  with- 
out the  education  or  the  talents;  William  IV.  was  a  Fred- 
erick William  of  Prussia  without  the  genius.  The  ordinary 
manners  of  the  society  at  the  court  of  either  had  a  full  fla- 
vor, to  put  it  in  the  softest  wray,  such  as  a  decent  tap-room 
would  hardly  exhibit  in  a  time  like  the  present.  No  one 
can  read  even  the  most  favorable  descriptions  given  by  con- 
temporaries of  the  manners  of  those  two  courts  without  feel- 
ing grateful  to  the  Duchess  of  Kent  for  resolving  that  her 
daughter  should  see  as  little  as  possible  of  their  ways  and 
their  company. 

It  was  remarked  with  some  interest  that  the  Queen  sub- 
scribed herself  simply  "Victoria,"  and  not,  as  had  been  ex- 
pected, "Alexandrina  Victoria."  Mr.  Greville  mentions  in 
liis  diary  of  December  24th,  1819,  that  "the  Duke  of  Kent 
gave  the  name  of  Alexandrina  to  his  daughter  in  compli- 
ment to  the  Emperor  of  Russia.  She  was  to  have  had  the 
name  of  Georgiana,  but  the  Duke  insisted  upon  Alexandrina 
being  her  first  name.  The  Regent  sent  for  Lieven  "  (the 
Russian  ambassador,  husband  of  the  famous  Princess  de  Lie- 
ven), "and  made  him  a  great  many  compliments,  en  leper- 


THE  KING  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!      13 

siflant,  on  the  Emperor's  being  godfather,  but  informed  him 
that  the  name  of  Georgiana  could  be  second  to  no  other  in 
this  country,  and  therefore  she  could  not  bear  it  at  all."  It 
was  a  very  wise  choice  to  employ  simply  the  name  of  Vic- 
toria, around  which  no  ungenial  associations  of  any  kind 
hung  at  that  time,  and  Avhich  can  have  only  grateful  asso- 
ciations in  the  history  of  this  country  for  the  future. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  any  formal  description  of 
the  various  ceremonials  and  pageantries  which  celebrated 
the  accession  of  the  new  sovereign.  The  proclamation  of 
the  Queen,  her  appearance  for  the  first  time  on  the  throne 
in  the  House  of  Lords  when  she  prorogued  Parliament  in 
person,  and  even  the  gorgeous  festival  of  her  coronation, 
which  took  place  on  June  28th,  in  the  following  year,  1838, 
may  be  passed  over  with  a  mere  word  of  record.  It  is 
worth  mentioning,  however,  that  at  the  coronation  proces- 
sion one  of  the  most  conspicuous  figures  was  that  of  Marshal 
Soult,  Duke  of  Dalmatia,  the  opponent  of  Moore  and  Wel- 
lington in  the  Peninsula,  the  commander  of  the  Old  Guard 
at  Liitzen,  and  one  of  the  strong  arms  of  Napoleon  at  Wa- 
terloo. Soult  had  been  sent  as  ambassador-extraordinary 
to  represent  the  French  Government  and  people  at  the  cor- 
onation of  Queen  Victoria,  and  nothing  could  exceed  the  en- 
thusiasm with  which  he  was  received  by  the  crowds  in  the 
streets  of  London  on  that  day.  The  white-haired  soldier 
was  cheered  wherever  a  glimpse  of  his  face  or  figure  could 
be  caught.  He  appeared  in  the  procession  in  a  carriage,  the 
frame  of  which  had  been  used  on  occasions  of  state  by  some 
of  the  Princes  of  the  House  of  Conde,  and  which  Soult  had 
had  splendidly  decorated  for  the  ceremony  of  the  corona- 
tion. Even  the  Austrian  ambassador,  says  an  eye-witness, 
attracted  less  attention  than  Soult,  although  the  dress  of 
the  Austrian,  Prince  Esterhazy,  "down  to  his  very  boot- 
heels,  sparkled  with  diamonds."  The  comparison  savors  now 
of  the  ridiculous,  but  is  remarkably  expressive  and  effective. 
Prince  Esterhazy's  name  in  those  days  suggested  nothing 
but  diamonds.  His  diamonds  may  be  said  to  glitter  through 
all  the  light  literature  of  the  time.  When  Lady  Mary  Wort- 
ley  Montagu  wanted  a  comparison  with  which  to  illustrate 
excessive  splendor  and  brightness,  she  found  it  in  "Mr. 
Pitt's  diamonds."  Prince  Esterhazy's  served  the  same  pur- 


14:  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

pose  for  the  writers  of  the  early  years  of  the  present  reign. 
It  was,  therefore,  perhaps,  no  very  poor  tribute  to  the  stout 
old  moustache  of  the  Republic  and  the  Empire  to  say  that 
at  a  London  pageant  his  war-worn  face  drew  attention  away 
from  Prince  Esterhazy's  diamonds.  Soult  himself  felt  very 
warmly  the  genuine  kindness  of  the  reception  given  to  him. 
Years  after,  in  a  debate  in  the  French  Chamber,  when  M. 
Guizot  was  accused  of  too  much  partiality  for  the  English 
alliance,  Marshal  Soult  declared  himself  a  warm  champion 
of  that  alliance.  "I  fought  the  English  down  to  Toulouse," 
he  said, "  when  I  fired  the  last  cannon  in  defence  of  the  na- 
tional independence ;  in  the  mean  time  I  have  been  in  Lon- 
don, and  France  knows  the  reception  which  I  had  there. 
The  English  themselves  cried  'Vive  Soult!'  —  they  cried 
'  Soult  forever !'  I  had  learned  to  estimate  the  English  on 
the  field  of  battle ;  I  have  learned  to  estimate  them  in  peace ; 
and  I  repeat  that  I  am  a  warm  partisan  of  the  English  alli- 
ance." History  is  not  exclusively  made  by  cabinets  and 
professional  diplomatists.  It  is  highly  probable  that  the 
cheers  of  a  London  crowd  on  the  day  of  the  Queen's  corona- 
tion did  something  genuine  and  substantial  to  restore  the 
good  feeling  between  this  country  and  France,  and  efface 
the  bitter  memories  of  Waterloo. 

It  is  a  fact  well  worthy  of  note,  amidst  whatever  records 
of  court  ceremonial  and  of  political  change,  that  a  few  days 
after  the  accession  of  the  Queen,  Mr.  Montefiore  was  elected 
Sheriff  of  London,  the  first  Jew  who  had  ever  been  chosen 
for  that  office ;  and  that  he  received  knighthood  at  the 
hands  of  her  Majesty  when  she  visited  the  City  on  the  fol- 
lowing Lord  Mayor's  day.  He  was  the  first  Jew  whom  roy- 
alty had  honored  in  this  country  since  the  good  old  times 
when  royalty  was  pleased  to  borrow  the  Jew's  money,  or 
order  instead  the  extraction  of  his  teeth.  The  expansion  of 
the  principle  of  religious  liberty  and  equality,  which  has 
been  one  of  the  most  remarkable  characteristics  of  the  reign 
of  Queen  Victoria,  could  hardly  have  been  more  becomingly 
inaugurated  than  by  the  compliment  which  sovereign  and 
city  paid  to  Sir  Moses  Montefiore. 

The  first  signature  attached  to  the  Act  of  Allegiance  pre- 
sented to  the  Queen  at  Kensington  Palace  was  that  of  her 
eldest  surviving  uncle,  Ernest,  Duke  of  Cumberland.  The 


THE  KING  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!      15 

fact  may  be  taken  as  an  excuse  for  introducing  a  few  words 
here  to  record  the  severance  that  then  took  place  between 
the  interests  of  this  country,  or  at  least  the  reigning  family 
of  these  realms,  and  another  State,  which  had  for  a  long  time 
been  bound  up  together  in  a  manner  seldom  satisfactory  to 
the  English  people.  In  the  whole  history  of  England  it  will 
be  observed  that  few  things  have  provoked  greater  popular 
dissatisfaction  than  the  connection  of  a  reigning  family  with 
the  crown  or  rulership  of  some  foreign  State.  There  is  an 
instinctive  jealousy  on  such  a  point,  which,  even  when  it  is 
unreasonable,  is  not  unnatural.  A  sovereign  of  England  had 
better  be  sovereign  of  England,  and  of  no  foreign  State. 
Many  favorable  auspices  attended  the  accession  of  Queen 
Victoria  to  the  throne ;  some  at  least  of  these  were  associ- 
ated with  her  sex.  The  country  was  in  general  disposed  to 
think  that  the  accession  of  a  woman  to  the  throne  would 
somewhat  clarify  and  purify  the  atmosphere  of  the  court. 
It  had  another  good  effect  as  well,  and  one  of  a  strictly  po- 
litical nature.  It  severed  the  connection  which  had  existed 
for  some  generations  between  this  country  and  Hanover. 
The  connection  was  only  personal,  the  successive  kings  of 
England  being  also  by  succession  sovereigns  of  Hanover. 

C5  •/  O 

The  crown  of  Hanover  was  limited  in  its  descent  to  the 
male  line,  and  it  passed  on  the  death  of  William  IV.  to  his 
eldest  surviving  brother,  Ernest,  Duke  of  Cumberland.  The 
change  was  in  almost  every  way  satisfactory  to  the  English 
people.  The  indirect  connection  between  England  and 
Hanover  had  at  no  time  been  a  matter  of  gratification  to 
the  public  of  this  country.  Many  cooler  and  more  enlight- 
ened persons  than  honest  Squire  Western  had  viewed  with 
disfavor,  and  at  one  time  with  distrust,  the  division  of  in- 
tei-ests  which  the  ownership  of  the  two  crowns  seemed  al- 
most of  necessity  to  create  in  our  English  sovereigns.  Be- 
sides, it  must  be  owned  that  the  people  of  this  country  were 
not  by  any  means  sorry  to  be  rid  of  the  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land. Not  many  of  George  III.'s  sons  were  popular;  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland  was  probably  the  least  popular  of  all. 
He  was  believed  by  many  persons  to  have  had  something 
moi'e  than  an  indirect,  or  passive,  or  innocent  share  in  the 
Orange  plot,  discovered  and  exposed  by  Joseph  Hume  in 
1835,  for  setting  aside  the  claims  of  the  young  Princess  Vic- 


16  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tovia,  and  putting  himself,  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  on  the 
throne;  a  scheme  which  its  authors  pretended  to  justify  by 
the  preposterous  assertion  that  they  feared  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  would  otherwise  seize  the  crown  for  himself. 
His  manners  were  rude,  overbearing,  and  sometimes  even 
brutal.  He  had  personal  habits  which  seemed  rather  fitted 
for  the  days  of  Tiberius,  or  for  the  court  of  Peter  the  Great, 
than  for  the  time  and  sphere  to  which  he  belonged.  Rumor 
not  unnaturally  exaggerated  his  defects,  and  in  the  mouths 
of  many  his  name  was  the  symbol  of  the  darkest  and  fiercest 
passions,  and  even  crimes.  Some  of  the  popular  reports 
with  regard  to  him  had  their  foundation  only  in  the  com- 
mon detestation  of  his  character  and  dread  of  his  influence; 
but  it  is  certain  that  he  was  profligate,  selfish,  overbearing, 
and  quarrelsome.  A  man  with  these  qualities  would  usual- 
ly be  described  in  fiction  as  at  all  events  bluntly  honest  and 
outspoken ;  but  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  was  deceitful  and 
treacherous.  He  was  outspoken  in  his  abuse  of  those  with 
whom  he  quarrelled,  and  in  his  style  of  anecdote  and  jocular 
conversation  ;  but  in  no  other  sense.  The  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, whom  he  hated,  told  Mr.  Greville  that  he  once  asked 
George  IV.  why  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  was  so  unpopular, 
and  the  King  replied,  "  Because  there  never  was  a  father 
well  with  bis  son,  or  husband  with  his  wife,  or  lover  with 
his  mistress,  or  friend  with  his  friend,  that  he  did  not  try  to 
make  mischief  between  them."  The  first  thing  he  did  on 
his  accession  to  the  throne  of  Hanover  was  to  abrogate  the 
constitution  which  had  been  agreed  to  by  the  Estates  of  the 
kingdom,  and  sanctioned  by  the  late  King,  William  IV. 
"Radicalism,"  said  the  King,  writing  to  an  English  noble- 
man, "  has  been  here  all  the  order  of  the  day,  and  all  the 
lower  class  appointed  to  office  were  more  or  less  imbued 
with  these  laudable  principles.  .  .  .  But  I  have  cut  the  wings 
of  this  democracy."  He  went,  indeed,  pretty  vigorously  to 
work,  for  he  dismissed  from  their  offices  seven  of  the  most 
distinguished  professors  of  the  University  of  Gottingen,  be- 
cause they  signed  a  protest  against  his  arbitrary  abrogation 
of  the  constitution.  Among  the  men  thus  pushed  from  their 
stools  were  —  Gervinus,  the  celebrated  historian  and  Shak- 
spearian  critic,  at  that  time  professor  of  history  and  litera- 
ture; Evvald,  the  Orientalist  and  theologian;  Jacob  Grimm; 


THE  KING-  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!   17 

and  Frederick  Dahlmann,  professor  of  political  science. 
Gervinus,  Grimm,  and  Dahlmann  were  not  merely  deprived 
of  their  offices,  but  were  actually  sent  into  exile.  The  ex- 
iles were  accompanied  across  the  frontier  by  an  immense 
concourse  of  students,  who  gave  them  a  triumphant  Geleit 
in  true  student  fashion,  and  converted  what  was  meant  for 
degradation  and  punishment  into  a  procession  of  honor. 
The  offence  against  all  rational  principles  of  civil  govern- 
ment in  these  arbitrary  proceedings  on  the  part  of  the  new 
King  was  the  more  flagrant  because  it  could  not  even  be 
pretended  that  the  professors  were  interfering  with  politi- 
cal matters  outside  their  province,  or  that  they  were  issuing 
manifestoes  calculated  to  disturb  the  public  peace.  The 
University  of  Gottingen  at  that  time  sent  a  representative 
to  the  Estates  of  the  kingdom,  and  the  protest  to  which  the 
seven  professors  attached  their  names  was  addressed  to  the 
academical  senate,  and  simply  declared  that  they  would  take 
no  part  in  the  ensuing  election,  because  of  the  suspension  of 
the  constitution.  All  this  led  to  somewhat  serious  disturb- 
ances in  Hanover,  which  it  needed  the  employment  of  mil- 
itary force  to  suppress. 

It  was  felt  in  England  that  the  mere  departure  of  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland  from  this  country  would  have  made 
the  severance  of  the  connection  with  Hanover  desirable,  even 
if  it  had  not  been  in  other  ways  an  advantage  to  us.  Later 
times  have  shown  how  much  we  have  gained  by  the  separa- 
tion. It  would  have  been  exceedingly  inconvenient,  to  say 
the  least,  if  the  crown  worn  by  a  sovereign  of  England  had 
been  hazarded  in  the  war  between  Austria  and  Prussia  in 
1866.  Our  reigning  family  must  have  seemed  to  suffer  in 
dignity  if  that  crown  had  been  roughly  knocked  off  the  head 
of  its  wearer,  who  happened  to  be  an  English  sovereign;  and 
it  would  have  been  absurd  to  expect  that  the  English  people 
could  engage  in  a  quarrel  with  which  their  interests  and  hon- 
or had  absolutely  nothing  to  do,  for  the  sake  of  a  mere  fam- 
ily possession  of  their  ruling  house.  Looking  back  from 
this  distance  of  time,  and  across  a  change  of  political  and 
social  manners  far  greater  than  the  distance  of  time  might 
seem  to  explain,  it  appears  difficult  to  understand  the  pas- 
sionate emotions  which  the  accession  of  the  young  Queen 
seems  to  have  excited  on  all  sides.  Some  influential  and 


18  A  HISTORY  OF   OUE  OWN  TIMES. 

prominent  politicians  talked  and  wrote  as  if  there  were  real- 
ly a  possibility  of  the  Tories  attempting  a  revolution  in  fa- 
vor of  the  Hanoverian  branch  of  the  royal  family ;  and  if 
some  such  crisis  had  again  come  round  as  that  which  tried 
the  nation  when  Queen  Anne  died.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
were  heard  loud  and  shrill  cries  that  the  Queen  was  destined 
to  be  conducted  by  her  constitutional  advisers  into  a  precip- 
itate pathway  leading  sheer  down  into  popery  and  anarchy. 
The  Times  insisted  that  "  the  anticipations  of  certain  Irish 
Roman  Catholics  respecting  the  success  of  their  warfare 
against  Church  and  State  under  the  auspices  of  these  not 
untried  ministers  into  whose  hands  the  all  but  infant  Queen 
has  been  compelled  by  her  unhappy  condition  to  deliver  her- 
self and  her  indignant  people,  are  to  be  taken  for  nothing, 
and  as  nothing,  but  the  chimeras  of  a  band  of  visionary  trai- 
tors." The  Times  even  thought  it  necessary  to  point  out 
that  for  her  Majesty  to  turn  papist,  to  marry  a  papist,  "or  in 
any  manner  follow  the  footsteps  of  the  Coburg  family,  whom 
these  incendiaries  describe  as  papists,"  would  involve  an 
"immediate  forfeiture  of  the  British  crown."  On  the  other 
hand,  some  of  the  Radical  and  more  especially  Irish  papers 
talked  in  the  plainest  terms  of  Tory  plots  to  depose,  or  even 
to  assassinate,  the  Queen,  and  put  the  Duke  of  Cumberland 
in  her  place.  O'Connell,  the  great  Irish  agitator,  declared 
in  a  public  speech  that  if  it  were  necessary  he  could  get 
"five  hundred  thousand  brave  Irishmen  to  defend  the  life, 
the  honor,  and  the  person  of  the  beloved  young  lady  by 
whom  England's  throne  is  now  filled."  Mr.  Henry  Grattan, 
the  son  of  the  famous  orator,  and  like  his  father  a  Protes- 
tant, declared,  at  a  meeting  in  Dublin,  that  "  if  her  Majesty 
were  once  fairly  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Tories,  I  would 
not  give  an  orange-peel  for  her  life."  He  even  went  on  to 
put  his  rhetorical  declaration  into  a  more  distinct  form :  "  If 
some  of  the  low  miscreants  of  the  party  got  round  her  Maj- 
esty, and  had  the  mixing  of  the  royal  bowl  at  night,  I  fear 
she  would  have  a  long  sleep."  This  language  seems  almost 
too  absurd  for  sober  record,  and  yet  was  hardly  more  absurd 
than  many  things  said  on  what  may  be  called  the  other  side. 
A  Mr.  Bradshaw,  Tory  member  for  Canterbury,  declared  at 
a  public  meeting  in  that  ancient  city  that  the  sheet-anchor 
of  the  Liberal  Ministry  was  the  body  of  "Irish  papists  and 


THE  KING  is  DEAD!  LONG  LIVE  THE  QUEEN!      19 

rapparees  whom  the  priests  return  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons." "These  are  the  men  who  represent  the  bigoted  sav- 
ages, hardly  more  civilized  than  the  natives  of  New  Zealand, 
but  animated  with  a  fierce,  undying  hatred  of  England.  Yet 
on  these  men  are  bestowed  the  countenance  and  support  of 
the  Queen  of  Protestant  England.  For,  alas  !  her  Majesty 
is  Queen  only  of  a  faction,  and  is  as  much  of  a  partisan  as 
the  Lord  Chancellor  himself."  At  a  Conservative  dinner  in 
Lancashire,  a  speaker  denounced  the  Queen  and  her  minis- 
ters on  the  same  ground  so  vehemently,  that  the  Command- 
er-in-chief addressed  a  remonstrance  to  some  military  offi- 
cers who  were  among  the  guests  at  this  excited  banquet, 
pointing  out  to  them  the  serious  responsibility  they  incurred 
by  remaining  in  any  assembly  when  such  language  was  ut- 
tered and  such  sentiments  were  expressed. 

No  one,  of  course,  would  take  impassioned  and  inflated 
harangues  of  this  kind  on  either  side  as  a  representation  of 
the  general  feeling.  Sober  persons  all  over  the  country 
must  have  known  perfectly  well  that  there  was  not  the  slight- 
est fear  that  the  young  Queen  would  turn  a  Roman  Catholic, 
or  that  her  ministry  intended  to  deliver  the  country  up  as  a 
prey  to  Rome.  Sober  persons  everywhere,  too,  must  have 
known  equally  well  that  there  was  no  longer  the  slightest 
cause  to  feel  any  alarm  about  a  Tory  plot  to  hand  over  the 
throne  of  England  to  the  detested  Duke  of  Cumberland. 
"We  only  desire,  in  quoting  such  outrageous  declarations,  to 
make  more  clear  the  condition  of  the  public  mind,  and  to 
show  what  the  state  of  the  political  world  must  have  been 
when  such  extravagance  and  such  delusions  were  possible. 
We  have  done  this  partly  to  show  what  were  the  trials  and 
difficulties  under  which  her  Majesty  came  to  the  throne,  and 
partly  for  the  mere  purpose  of  illustrating  the  condition  of 
the  country  and  of  political  education.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  all  over  the  country  passion  and  ignorance  were 
at  work  to  make  the  task  of  constitutional  government  pecul- 
iarly difficult.  A  vast  number  of  the  followers  of  the  Tories 
in  country  places  really  believed  that  the  Liberals  were  de- 
termined to  hurry  the  sovereign  into  some  policy  tending  to 
the  degradation  of  the  monarchy.  If  any  cool  and  enlight- 
ened reasoner  were  to  argue  with  them  on  this  point,  and 
endeavor  to  convince  them  of  the  folly  of  ascribing  such  pur- 


20  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

poses  to  a  number  of  English  statesmen  whose  interests, 
position,  and  honor  were  absolutely  bound  up  with  the  suc- 
cess and  the  glory  of  the  State,  the  indignant  and  unreason- 
ing Tories  would  be  able  to  cite  the  very  words  of  so  great 
and  so  sober-minded  a  statesman  as  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who,  in 
his  famous  speech  to  the  electors  of  Tamworth,  promised  to 
rescue  the  constitution  from  being  made  the  "  victim  of  false 
friends,"  and  the  country  from  being  "  trampled  under  the 
hoof  of  a  ruthless  democracy."  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  sen- 
sible person  were  to  try  to  persuade  hot-headed  people  on 
the  opposite  side  that  it  was  absurd  to  suppose  the  Tories 
really  meant  any  hai*m  to  the  freedom  and  the  peace  of  the 
country  and  the  security  of  the  succession,  he  might  be  in- 
vited, with  significant  expression,  to  read  the  manifesto  is- 
sued by  Lord  Durham  to  the  electors  of  Sunderland,  in  which 
that  eminent  statesman  declared  that  "in  all  circumstances, 
at  all  hazards,  be  the  personal  consequences  what  they  may," 
he  would  ever  be  found  ready  when  called  upon  to  defend 
the  principles  on  which  the  constitution  of  the  country  was 
then  settled.  We  know  now  very  well  that  Sir  Robert  Peel 
and  Lord  Durham  were  using  the  language  of  innocent  meta- 
phor. Sir  Robert  Peel  did  not  really  fear  much  the  hoof  of 
the  ruthless  democracy ;  Lord  Durham  did  not  actually  ex- 
pect to  be  called  upon  at  any  terrible  risk  to  himself  to  fight 
the  battle  of  freedom  oh  English  soil.  But  when  those 
whose  minds  had  been  bewildered  and  whose  passions  had 
been  inflamed  by  the  language  of  the  Times  on  the  one 
side,  and  that  of  O'Connell  on  the  other,  came  to  read  the 
calmer  and  yet  sufficiently  impassioned  words  of  responsible 
statesmen  like  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  Lord  Durham,  they  might 
be  excused  if  they  found  rather  a  confirmation  than  a  ref- 
utation of  their  arguments  and  their  fears. 

The  truth  is  that  the  country  was  in  a  very  excited  condi- 
tion, and  that  it  is  easy  to  imagine  a  succession  of  events 
which  might  in  a  moment  have  thrown  it  into  utter  confu- 
sion. At  home  and  abroad  things  were  looking  ominous 
for  the  new  reign.  To  begin  with,  the  last  two  reigns  had, 
on  the  whole,  done  much  to  loosen,  not  only  the  personal 
feeling  of  allegiance,  but  even  the  general  confidence  in  the 
virtue  of  monarchical  rule.  The  old  plan  of  personal  gov- 
ernment had  become  an  anomaly,  and  the  system  of  a  gen- 


STATESMEN  AND  PARTIES.  21 

nine  constitutional  government,  such  as  we  know,  bad  not 
yet  been  tried.  The  very  manner  in  which  the  Reform  Bill 
had  been  carried,  the  political  stratagem  which  had  been  re- 
sorted to  when  further  resistance  seemed  dangerous,  was  not 
likely  to  exalt  in  popular  estimate  the  value  of  what  was 
then  gracefully  called  constitutional  government.  Only  a 
short  time  before,  the  country  had  seen  Catholic  emancipa- 
tion conceded,  not  from  a  sense  of  justice  on  the  part  of  min- 
isters, but  avowedly  because  further  resistance  must  lead  to 
civil  disturbance.  There  was  not  much  in  all  this  to  impress 
an  intelligent  and  independent  people  with  a  sense  of  the 
great  wisdom  of  the  rulers  of  the  country,  or  of  the  indis- 
pensable advantages  of  the  system  which  they  represented. 
Social  discontent  prevailed  almost  everywhere.  Economic 
laws  were  hardly  understood  by  the  country  in  general. 
Class  interests  were  fiercely  arrayed  against  each  other. 
The  cause  of  each  man's  class  filled  him  with  a  positive 
fanaticism.  He  was  not  a  mere  selfish  and  grasping  partisan, 
but  he  sincerely  believed  that  each  other  class  was  arrayed 
against  his,  and  that  the  natural  duty  of  self-defence  and 
self-preservation  compelled  him  to  stand  firmly  by  his  own. 


CHAPTER  II. 

STATESMEN    AND   PARTIES. 

LORD  MELBOURNE  was  the  First  Minister  of  the  Crown 
when  the  Queen  succeeded  to  the  throne.  He  was  a  man 
who  then  and  always  after  made  himself  particularly  dear 
to  the  Queen,  and  for  whom  she  had  the  strongest  regard. 
He  was  of  kindly,  somewhat  indolent  nature;  fair  and  even 
generous  toward  his  political  opponents ;  of  the  most  genial 
disposition  toward  his  friends.  He  was  emphatically  not  a 
strong  man.  He  was  not  a  man  to  make  good  grow  where 
it  was  not  already  growing,  to  adopt  the  expression  of  a 
great  author.  Long  before  that  time  his  eccentric  wife,  Lady 
Caroline  Lamb,  had  excused  herself  for  some  of  her  follies 
and  frailties  by  pleading  that  her  husband  was  not  a  man  to 
watch  over  any  one's  morals.  He  was  a  kindly  counsellor 
to  a  young  Queen  ;  and,  happily  for  herself,  the  young  Queen 


22  A  HISTORY  OP  OUE  OWN  TIMES. 

in  this  case  had  strong,  clear  sense  enough  of  her  own  not  to 
be  absolutely  dependent  on  any  counsel.  Lord  Melbourne 
was  not  a  statesman.  His  best  qualities,  personal  kindness 
and  good-nature  apart,  were  purely  negative.  He  was  un- 
fortunately not  content  even  with  the  reputation  for  a  sort 
of  indolent  good-nature  which  he  might  have  well  deserved : 
he  strove  to  make  himself  appear  hopelessly  idle,  trivial, 
and  careless.  When  he  really  was  serious  and  earnest,  he 
seemed  to  make  it  his  business  to  look  like  one  in  whom  no 
human  affairs  could  call  up  a  gleam  of  interest.  He  became 
the  fanfaron  of  levities  which  he  never  had.  We  have 
amusing  pictures  of  him  as  he  occupied  himself  in  blowing  a 
feather  or  nursing  a  sofa-cushion  Avhile  receiving  an  impor- 
tant and  perhaps  highly  sensitive  deputation  from  this  or 
that  commercial  "interest."  Those  who  knew  him  insisted 
that  he  really  was  listening  with  all  his  might  and  main ; 
that  he  had  sat  up  the  whole  night  before,  studying  the 
question  which  he  seemed  to  think  so  unworthy  of  any  at- 
tention ;  and  that,  so  far  from  being,  like  Horace,  wholly  ab- 
sorbed in  his  trifles,  he  was  at  very  great  pains  to  keep  up 
the  appearance  of  a  trifler.  A  brilliant  critic  has  made  a 
lively  and  amusing  attack  on  this  alleged  peculiarity.  "If 
the  truth  must  be  told,"  says  Sydney  Smith,  "  our  viscount 
is  somewhat  of  an  impostor.  Everything  about  him  seems 
to  betoken  careless  desolation ;  any  one  would  suppose  from 
his  manner  that  he  was  playing  at  chuck-farthing  with  hu- 
man happiness ;  that  he  was  always  on  the  heel  of  pastime ; 
that  he  would  giggle  away  the  Great  Charter,  and  decide 
by  the  method  of  teetotum  whether  my  lords  the  bishops 
should  or  should  not  retain  their  seats  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
All  this  is  but  the  mere  vanity  of  surprising,  and  making  us 
believe  that  he  can  play  with  kingdoms  as  other  men  can 
with  ninepins.  ...  I  am  sorry  to  hurt  any  man's  feelings, 
and  to  brush  away  the  magnificent  fabric  of  levity  and  gay- 
cty  he  has  reared ;  but  I  accuse  our  minister  of  honesty  and 
diligence ;  I  deny  that  he  is  careless  or  rash :  he  is  nothing 
more  than  a  man  of  good  understanding  and  good  principle 
disguised  in  the  eternal  and  somewhat  wearisome  affectation 
of  a  political  roue." 

Such  a  masquerading  might  perhaps  have  been  excusable, 
or  even  attractive,  in  the  case  of  a  man  of  really  brilliant 


STATESMEN   AND   PARTIES.  23 

and  commanding  talents.  Lookers-on  are  always  rather 
apt  to  be  fascinated  by  the  spectacle  of  a  man  of  well  rec- 
ognized strength  and  force  of  character  playing  for  the  mo- 
ment the  part  of  an  indolent  trifler.  The  contrast  is  charm- 
ing in  a  brilliant  Prince  Hal  or  such  a  Sardanapalus  as  By- 
ron drew.  In  our  own  time  a  considerable  amount  of  the 
popularity  of  Lord  Palmerston  was  inspired  by  the  amusing 
antagonism  between  his  assumed  levity  and  his  well-known 
force  of  intellect  and  strength  of  will.  But  in  Lord  Mel- 
bourne's case  the  affectation  had  no  such  excuse  or  happy 
effect.  He  was  not  by  any  means  a  Palmerston.  He  was 
only  fitted  to  rule  in  the  quietest  times.  He  was  a  poor 
speaker,  utterly  unable  to  encounter  the  keen,  penetrating 
criticisms  of  Lyndhurst  or  the  vehement  and  remorseless 
invectives  of  Brougham.  Debates  were  then  conducted 
with  a  bitterness  of  personality  unknown,  or  at  all  events 
very  rarely  known,  in  our  days.  Even  in  the  House  of 
Lords  language  was  often  interchanged  of  the  most  virulent 
hostility.  The  rushing  impetuosity  and  fury  of  Brougham's 
style  had  done  much  then  to  inflame  the  atmosphere  which 
in  our  days  is  usually  so  cool  and  moderate. 

It  probably  added  to  the  warmth  of  the  attacks  on  the 
ministry  of  Lord  Melbourne  that  the  Prime -minister  was 
supposed  to  be  an  especial  favorite  with  the  young  Queen. 
When  Victoria  came  to  the  throne  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
gave  frank  expression  to  his  feelings  as  to  the  future  of  his 
party.  He  was  of  opinion  that  the  Tories  would  never 
have  any  chance  with  a  young  woman  for  sovereign.  "I 
have  no  small-talk,"  he  said,  "  and  Peel  has  no  manners."  It 
had  probably  not  occurred  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  to 
think  that  a  woman  could  be  capable  of  as  sound  a  consti- 
tutional policy,  and  could  show  as  little  regard  for  personal 
predilections  in  the  busines  of  government,  as  any  man.  All 
this,  however,  only  tended  to  embitter  the  feeling  against 
the  Whig  government.  Lord  Melbourne's  constant  attend- 
ance on  the  young  Queen  was  regarded  with  keen  jealousy 
and  dissatisfaction.  According  to  some  critics,  the  Prime- 
minister  was  endeavoring  to  inspire  her  with  all  his  own 
gay  heedlessness  of  character  and  temperament.  Accord- 
ing to  others,  Lord  Melbourne's  purpose  was  to  make  him- 
self agreeable  and  indispensable  to  the  Queen ;  to  surround 


24  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

her  with  his  friends,  relations,  and  creatures,  and  thus  get 
a  lifelong  hold  of  power  in  England,  in  defiance  of  political 
changes  and  parties.  It  is  curious  now  to  look  back  on 
much  that  was  said  in  the  political  and  personal  heats  and 
bitternesses  of  the  time.  If  Lord  Melbourne  had  been  a 
French  mayor  of  the  palace,  whose  real  object  was  to  make 
himself  virtual  ruler  of  the  State,  and  to  hold  the  sovereign 
as  a  puppet  in  his  hands,  there  could  not  have  been  greater 
anger,  fear,  and  jealousy.  Since  that  time  we  have  all  learn- 
ed on  the  very  best  authority  that  Lord  Melbourne  actually 
was  himself  the  person  to  advise  the  Queen  to  show  some 
confidence  in  the  Tories — to  "hold  out  the  olive-branch  a 
little  to  them,"  as  he  expressed  it.  He  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  greedy  of  power,  or  to  have  used  any  unfair 
means  of  getting  or  keeping  it.  The  character  of  the  young 
sovereign  seems  to  have  impressed  him  deeply.  His  real  or 
affected  levity  gave  way  to  a  genuine  and  lasting  desire 
to  make  her  life  as  happy,  and  her  reign  as  successful,  as  he 
could.  The  Queen  always  felt  the  warmest  affection  and 
gratitude  for  him,  and  showed  it  long  after  the  public  had 
given  up  the  suspicion  that  she  could  be  a  puppet  in  the 
hands  of  a  minister. 

Still,  it  is  certain  that  the  Queen's  Prime-minister  was  by 
no  means  a  popular  man  at  the  time  of  her  accession.  Even 
observers  who  had  no  political  or  personal  interest  what- 
ever in  the  conditions  of  cabinets  were  displeased  to  see  the 
opening  of  the  new  reign  so  much,  to  all  appearance,  under 
the  influence  of  one  who  either  was  or  tried  to  be  a  mere 
lounger.  The  deputations  went  away  offended  and  dis- 
gusted when  Lord  Melbourne  played  with  feathers  or  dan- 
dled sofa-cushions  in  their  presence.  The  almost  fierce  en- 
ergy and  strenuousness  of  a  man  like  Brougham  showed 
in  overwhelming  contrast  to  the  happy-go-lucky  airs  and 
graces  of  the  Premier.  It  is  likely  that  there  was  quite  as 
much  of  affectation  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other ;  but  the 
affectation  of  a  devouring  zeal  for  the  public  service  told  at 
least  far  better  than  the  other  in  the  heat  and  stress  of  de- 
bate. When  the  new  reign  began,  the  ministry  had  two 
enemies  or  critics  in  the  House  of  Lords  of  the  most  formi- 
dable character.  Either  alone  would  have  been  a  trouble 
to  a  minister  of  far  stronger  mould  than  Lord  Melbourne; 


STATESMEN   AND.   PAETIES.  25 

but  circumstances  threw  them  both,  for  the  moment,  into  a 
chance  alliance  against  him. 

One  of  these  was  Lord  Brougham.  No  stronger  and 
stranger  a  figure  than  his  is  described  in  the  modern  history 
of  England.  He  was  gifted  with  the  most  varied  and  strik- 
ing talents,  and  with  a  capacity  for  labor  which  sometimes 
seemed  almost  superhuman.  Not  merely  had  he  the  capac- 
ity for  labor,  but  he  appeared  to  have  a  positive  passion  for 
work.  His  restless  energy  seemed  as  if  it  must  stretch  itself 
out  on  every  side  seeking  new  fields  of  conquest.  The  study 
that  was  enough  to  occupy  the  whole  time  and  wear  out 
the  frame  of  other  men  was  only  recreation  to  him.  He 
might  have  been  described  as  one  possessed  by  a  very  de- 
mon of  work.  His  physical  strength  never  gave  way.  His 
high  spirits  never  deserted  him.  His  self -confidence  was 
boundless.  He  thought  he  knew  everything,  and  could  do 
everything  better  than  any  other  man.  He  delighted  in 
giving  evidence  that  he  understood  the  business  of  the  spe- 
cialist better  than  the  specialist  himself.  His  vanity  was 
overweening,  and  made  him  ridiculous  almost  as  often  and 
as  much  as  his  genius  made  him  admired.  The  comic  liter- 
ature of  more  than  a  generation  had  no  subject  more  fruitful 
than  the  vanity  and  restlessness  of  Lord  Brougham.  He 
was  beyond  doubt  a  great  Parliamentary  orator.  His  style 
was  too  diffuse  and  sometimes  too  uncouth  to  suit  a  day 
like  our  own,  when  form  counts  for  more  than  substance, 
when  passion  seems  out  of  place  in  debate,  and  not  to  ex- 
aggerate is  far  more  the  object  than  to  try  to  be  great. 
Brougham's  action  was  wild,  and  sometimes  even  furious ; 
his  gestures  were  singularly  ungraceful;  his  manners  were 
grotesque  ;  but  of  his  power  over  his  hearers  there  could  be 
no  doubt.  That  power  remained  with  him  until  a  far  later 
date ;  and  long  after  the  years  when  men  usually  continue 
to  take  part  in  political  debate,  Lord  Brougham  could  be 
impassioned,  impressive,  and  even  overwhelming.  He  was 
not  an  orator  of  the  highest  class:  his  speeches  have  not 
stood  the  test  of  time.  Apart  from  the  circumstances  of 
the  hour  and  the  personal  power  of  the  speaker,  they  could 
hardly  arouse  any  great  delight,  or  even  interest ;  for  they 
are  by  no  means  models  of  English  style,  and  they  have  lit- 
tle of  that  profound  philosophical  interest,  that  pregnancy 

I.— 2 


26  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR,  OWN  TIMES. 

of  thought  and  meaning,  aud  that  splendor  of  eloquence, 
which  make  the  speeches  of  Burke  always  classic,  and  even 
in  a  certain  sense  always  popular  among  us.  In  truth,  no 
man  could  have  done  with  abiding  success  all  the  things 
which  Brougham  did  successfully  for  the  hour.  On  law,  on 
politics,  on  literature,  on  languages,  on  science,  on  art,  on 
industrial  and  commercial  enterprise,  he  professed  to  pro- 
nounce with  the  authority  of  a  teacher.  "  If  Brougham 
knew  a  little  of  law,"  said  O'Connell,  when  the  former  be- 
came Lord  Chancellor,  "  he  would  know  a  little  of  every- 
thing." The  anecdo'te  is  told  in  another  way  too,  which 
perhaps  makes  it  even  more  piquant.  "The  new  Lord 
Chancellor  knows  a  little  of  everything  in  the  world — even 
of  law." 

Brougham's  was  an  excitable  and  self- asserting  nature. 
He  had  during  many  years  shown  himself  an  embodied  in- 
fluence, a  living,  speaking  force  in  the  promotion  of  great 
political  aud  social  reforms.  If  his  talents  were  great,  if  his 
personal  vanity  was  immense,  let  it  be  said  that  his  services 
to  the  cause  of  human  freedom  and  education  were  simply 
inestimable.  As  an  opponent  of  slavery  in  the  colonies,  as 
an  advocate  of  political  reform  at  home,  of  law  reform,  of 
popular  education,  of  religious  equality,  he  had  worked  with 
indomitable  zeal,  with  resistless  passion,  and  with  splendid 
success.  But  his  career  passed  through  two  remarkable 
changes  which,  to  a  great  extent,  interfered  with  the  full  effi- 
cacy of  his  extraordinary  powers.  The  first  was  when  from 
popular  tribune  and  reformer  he  became  Lord  Chancellor  in 
1830 ;  the  second  was  when  he  was  left  out  of  office  on  the 
reconstruction  of  the  Whig  Ministry  in  April,  1835,  and  he 
passed  for  the  remainder  of  his  life  into  the  position  of  an 
independent  or  unattached  critic  of  the  measures  and  policy 
of  other  men.  It  has  never  been  clearly  known  why  the 
Whigs  so  suddenly  threw  over  Brougham.  The  common 
belief  is  that  his  eccentricities  and  his  almost  savage  temper 
made  him  intolerable  in  a  cabinet.  It  has  been  darkly  hint- 
ed that  for  awhile  his  intellect  was  actually  under  a  cloud, 
as  people  said  that  of  Chatham  was  during  a  momentous 
season. 

Lord  Brougham  was  not  a  man  likely  to  forget  or  forgive 
the  wrong  which  he  must  have  believed  that  lie  had  sus- 


STATESMEN   AND   PARTIES.  27 

tained  at  the  hands  of  the  Whigs.     He  became  the  fiercest 
and  most  formidable  of  Lord  Melbourne's  hostile  critics. 

The  other  opponent  who  has  been  spoken  of  was  Lord 
Lyndhurst.  Lord  Lyndhurst  resembled  Lord  Brougham  in 
the  length  of  his  career  and  in  capacity  for  work,  if  in  noth- 
ing else.  Lyndhurst,  who  was  born  in  Boston  the  year  before 
the  tea-ships  were  boarded  in  that  harbor  and  their  cargoes 
flung  into  the  water,  has  been  heard  addressing  the  House 
of  Lords  in  all  vigor  and  fluency  by  men  who  are  yet  far 
from  middle  age.  He  was  one  of  the  most  effective  Parlia- 
mentary debaters  of  a  time  which  has  known  such  men  as 
Peel  and  Palmerston,  Gladstone  and  Disraeli,  Bright  and 
Cobden.  His  style  was  singularly  and  even  severely  clear, 
direct,  and  pure;  his  manner  was  easy  and  graceful;  his 
voice  remarkably  sweet  and  strong.  Nothing  could  have 
been  in  greater  contrast  than  his  clear,  correct,  nervous  ar- 
gument, and  the  impassioned  invectives  and  overwhelming 
strength  of  Brougham.  Lyndhurst  had,  as  has  been  said,  an 
immense  capacity  for  work,  when  the  work  had  to  be  done ; 
but  his  natural  tendency  was  as  distinctly  toward  indolence 
as  Brougham's  was  toward  unresting  activity.  Nor  were 
Lyndhurst's  political  convictions  ever  very  clear.  By  the 
habitude  of  associating  with  the  Tories,  and  receiving  office 
from  them,  and  speaking  for  them,  and  attacking  their  ene- 
mies with  argument  and  sarcasm,  Lyndhurst  finally  settled 
down  into  all  the  ways  of  Toryism.  But  nothing  in  his  varied 
history  showed  that  he  had  any  particular  preference  that 
way;  and  there  were  many  passages  in  his  career  when  it 
would  seem  as  if  a  turn  of  chance  decided  what  path  of  po- 
litical life  he  was  to  follow.  As  a  keen  debater  he  was,  per- 
haps, hardly  ever  excelled  in  Parliament;  but  he  had  neither 
the  passion  nor  the  genius  of  the  orator;  and  his  capacity 
was  narrow  indeed  in  its  range  when  compared  with  the 
astonishing  versatility  and  omnivorous  mental  activity  of 
Brougham.  As  a  speaker  he  was  always  equal.  He  seem- 
ed to  know  no  varying  moods  or  fits  of  mental  lassitude. 
Whenever  he  spoke  he  reached  at  once  the  same  high  level 
as  a  debater.  The  very  fact  may  in  itself,  perhaps,  be  taken 
as  conclusive  evidence  that  he  was  not  an  orator.  The 
higher  qualities  of  the  orator  are  no  more  to  be  summoned 
at  will  than  those  of  the  poet. 


28  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

These  two  men  were  without  any  comparison  the  two 
leading  debaters  in  the  House  of  Lords.  Lord  Melbourne 
had  not  at  that  time  in  the  Upper  House  a  single  man  of 
first- class  or  even  of  second-class  debating  power  on  the 
bench  of  the  ministry.  An  able  writer  has  well  remarked 
that  the  position  of  the  ministry  in  the  House  of  Lords 
might  be  compared  to  that  of  a  water -logged  wreck  into 
which  enemies  from  all  quarters  are  pouring  their  broad- 
sides. 

The  accession  of  the  Queen  made  it  necessary  that  a  new 
Parliament  should  be  summoned.  The  struggle  between 
parties  among  the  constituencies  was  very  animated,  and 
was  carried  on  in  some  instances  with  a  recourse  to  manoeu- 
vre and  stratagem  such  as  in  our  time  would  hardly  be  pos- 
sible. The  result  was  not  a  very  marked  alteration  in  the 
condition  of  parties ;  but,  on  the  whole,  the  advantage  re- 
mained with  the  Tories.  Somewhere  about  this  time,  it 
may  be  remarked,  the  use  of  the  word  "  Conservative,"  to 
describe  the  latter  political  party,  first  came  into  fashion. 
Mr.  "Wilson  Croker  is  credited  with  the  honor  of  having  first 
employed  the  word  in  that  sense.  In  an  article  in  the  Quar- 
terly Review  some  years  before,  he  spoke  of  being  decidedly 
and  conscientiously  attached  "  to  what  is  called  the  Tory, 
but  which  might  with  more  propriety  be  called  the  Con- 
servative, party."  During  the  elections  for  the  new  Parlia- 
ment, Lord  John  Russell,  speaking  at  a  public  dinner  at 
Stroud,  made  allusion  to  the  new  name  which  his  opponents 
were  beginning  to  affect  for  their  party.  "If  that,"  he  said, 
"  is  the  name  that  pleases  them,  if  they  say  that  the  old  dis- 
tinction of  Whig  and  Tory  should  no  longer  be  kept  up,  I 
am  ready,  in  opposition  to  their  name  of  Conservative,  to 
take  the  name  of  Reformer,  and  to  stand  by  that  opposition." 

The  Tories,  or  Conservatives,  then,  had  a  slight  gain  as  the 
result  of  the  appeal  to  the  country.  The  new  Parliament, 
on  its  assembling,  seems  to  have  gathered  in  the  Commons 
an  unusually  large  number  of  gifted  and  promising  men. 
There  was  something,  too,  of  a  literary  stamp  about  it,  a  fact 
not  much  to  be  observed  in  Parliaments  of  a  date  nearer  to 
the  present  time.  'Mr.  Grote,  the  historian  of  Greece,  sat  for 
the  city  of  London.  The  late  Lord  Lytton,  then  Mr.  Edward 
Lytton  Bulwer,  had  a  seat — an  advanced  Radical  at  that  day. 


STATESMEN  AND  PARTIES.  29 

Mr.  Disraeli  came  then  into  Parliament  for  the  first  time. 
Charles  Duller,  full  of  high  spirits,  brilliant  humor,  and  the 
very  inspiration  of  keen  good-sense,  seemed  on  the  sure  way 
to  that  career  of  renown  which  a  premature  death  cut  short. 
Sir  William  Molesworth  was  an  excellent  type  of  the  school 
which  in  later  days  was  called  the  Philosophical  Radical. 
Another  distinguished  member  of  the  same  school,  Mr.  Roe- 
buck, had  lost  his  seat,  and  was  for  the  moment  an  outsider. 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  already  five  years  in  Parliament. 
The  late  Lord  Carlisle,  then  Lord  Morpeth,  was  looked  upon 
as  a  graceful  specimen  of  the  literary  and  artistic  young  no- 
bleman, who  also  cultivates  a  little  politics  for  his  intellectu- 
al amusement.  Lord  John  Russell  had  but  lately  begun  his 
career  as  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons;  Lord  Palmerston 
was  Foreign  Secretary,  but  had  not  even  then  got  the  credit 
of  the  great  ability  which  he  possessed.  Not  many  years 
before  Mr.  Greville  spoke  of  him  as  a  man  who  "  had  been 
twenty  years  in  office,  and  had  never  distinguished  himself 
before."  Mr.  Greville  expresses  a  mild  surprise  at  the  high 
opinion  which  persons  who  knew  Lord  Palmerston  intimate- 
ly were  pleased  to  entertain  as  to  his  ability  and  his  capac- 
ity for  work.  Only  those  who  knew  him  very  intimately 
indeed  had  any  idea  of  the  capacity  for  governing  Parlia- 
ment and  the  country  which  he  was  soon  afterward  to  dis- 
play. Sir  Robert  Peel  was  leader  of  the  Conservative  party. 
Lord  Stanley,  the  late  Lord  Derby,  was  still  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  had  not  long  before  broken  definitively  with 
the  Whigs  on  the  question  of  the  Irish  ecclesiastical  estab- 
lishment, and  had  passed  over  to  that  Conservative  party  of 
which  he  afterward  became  the  most  influential  leader,  and 
the  most  powerful  Parliamentary  orator.  O'Connell  and 
Sheil  represented  the  eloquence  of  the  Irish  national  party. 
Decidedly  the  Plouse  of  Commons  first  elected  during  Queen 
Victoria's  reign  was  strong  in  eloquence  and  talent.  Only 
two  really  great  speakers  have  arisen,  in  the  forty  years  that 
followed,  who  were  not  members  of  Parliament  at  that  time — 
Mr.  Cobden  and  Mr.  Bright.  Mr.  Cobden  had  come  forward 
as  a  candidate  for  the  borough  of  Stockport,  but  was  not 
successful,  and  did  not  obtain  a  seat  in  Parliament  until  four 
years  after.  It  was  only  by  what  may  be  called  an  accident 
that  Macaulay  and  Mr.  Roebuck  were  not  in  the  Parliament 


30  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

of  1837.  It  is  fair  to  say,  therefore,  that,  except  for  Cobden 
and  Bright,  the  subsequent  forty  years  had  added  no  first- 
class  name  to  the  records  of  Parliamentary  eloquence. 

The  ministry  was  not  very  strong  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. Its  conditions,  indeed,  hardly  allowed  it  to  feel  itself 
strong  even  if  it  had  had  more  powerful  representatives  in 
either  House.  Its  adherents  were  but  loosely  held  together. 
The  more  ardent  reformers  were  disappointed  with  minis- 
ters; the  Free -trade  movement  was  rising  into  distinct 
bulk  and  proportions,  and  threatened  to  be  formidably  in- 
dependent of  mere  party  ties.  The  Government  had  to  rely 
a  good  deal  on  the  precarious  support  of  Mr.  O'Connell  and 
his  followers.  They  were  not  rich  in  debating  talent  in  the 
Commons  any  more  than  in  the  Lords.  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
the  leader  of  the  Opposition,  was  by  far  the  most  powerful 
man  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Added  to  his  great  quali- 
ties as  an  administrator  and  a  Parliamentary  debater,  he  had 
the  virtue,  then  very  rare  among  Conservative  statesmen,  of 
being  a  sound  and  clear  financier,  with  a  good  grasp  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  political  economy.  His  high  au- 
stere character  made  him  respected  by  opponents  as  well 
as  by  friends.  He  had  not,  perhaps,  many  intimate  friends. 
His  temperament  was  cold,  or  at  least  its  heat  was  self-con- 
tained ;  he  threw  out  no  genial  glow  to  those  around  him. 
He  was  by  nature  a  reserved  and  shy  man,  in  whose  man- 
ners shyness  took  the  form  of  pompousness  and  coldness. 
Something  might  be  said  of  him  like  that  which  Richter 
said  of  Schiller :  he  was  to  strangers  stony,  and  like  a  preci- 
pice from  which  it  was  their  instinct  to  spring  back.  It  is 
certain  that  he  had  warm  and  generous  feelings,  but  his 
very  sensitiveness  only  led  him  to  disguise  them.  The  con- 
trast between  his  emotions  and  his  lack  of  demonstrative- 
ness  created  in  him  a  constant  artificiality  which  often  seem- 
ed mere  awkwardness.  It  was  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  his  real  genius  and  character  displayed  themselves. 
The  atmosphere  of  debate  was  to  him  what  Macaulay  says 
wine  was  to  Addison,  the  influence  which  broke  the  spell 
under  which  his  fine  intellect  seemed  otherwise  to  lie  im- 
prisoned. Peel  was  a  perfect  master  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. He  was  as  great  an  orator  as  any  man  could  be  who 
addresses  himself  to  the  House  of  Commons,  its  ways  and 


STATESMEN  AND   PARTIES,  31 

its  purposes  alone.  He  went  as  near,  perhaps,  to  the  rank  of 
a  great  orator  as  any  one  can  go  who  is  but  little  gifted  with 
imagination.  Oratory  has  been  well  described  as  the  fusion 
of  reason  and  passion.  Passion  always  carries  something 
of  the  imaginative  along  with  it.  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  little 
imagination,  and  almost  none  of  that  passion  which  in  elo- 
quence sometimes  supplies  its  place.  His  style  was  clear, 
strong,  and  stately ;  full  of  various  argument  and  apt  il- 
lustration drawn  from  books  and  from  the  world  of  politics 
and  commerce.  He  followed  a  difficult  argument  home  to 
its  utter  conclusions;  and  if  it  had  in  it  any  lurking  fallacy 
he  brought  out  the  weakness  into  the  clearest  light,  often 
with  a  happy  touch  of  humor  and  quiet  sarcasm.  His 
speeches  might  be  described  as  the  very  perfection  of  good- 
sense  and  high  principle  clothed  in  the  most  impressive  lan- 
guage. But  they  were  something  more  peculiar  than  this, 
for  they  were  so  constructed,  in  their  argument  and  their 
style  alike,  as  to  touch  the  very  core  of  the  intelligence  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  They  told  of  the  feelings  and  the  in- 
spiration of  Parliament  as  the  ballad-music  of  a  country  tells 
of  its  scenery  and  its  national  sentiments. 

Lord  Stanley  was  a  far  more  energetic  and  impassioned 
speaker  than  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  perhaps  occasionally,  in 
his  later  career,  came  now  and  then  nearer  to  the  height  of 
genuine  oratory.  But  Lord  Stanley  was  little  more  than  a 
splendid  Parliamentary  partisan,  even  when,  long  after,  he 
was  Prime-minister  of  England.  He  had  very  little,  indeed, 
of  that  class  of  information  which  the  modern  world  requires 
of  its  statesmen  and  leaders.  Of  political  economy,  of 
finance,  of  the  development  and  the  discoveries  of  modern 
science,  he  knew  almost  as  little  as  it  is  possible  for  an  able 
and  energetic  man  to  know  who  lives  in  the  throng  of  active 
life  and  hears  what  people  are  talking  of  around  him.  He 
once  said  good-humoredly  of  himself,  that  he  was  brought 
up  in  the  pre-scientific  period.  His  scholarship  was  mere- 
ly such  training  in  the  classic  languages  as  allowed  him  to 
have  a  full  literary  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  Greek  and 
Roman  literature.  He  had  no  real  and  deep  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  the  Greek  and  the  Roman  people,  nor  proba- 
bly did  he  at  all  appreciate  the  great  difference  between  the 
spirit  of  Roman  and  of  Greek  civilization.  He  had,  in  fact, 


32  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

what  would  have  been  called  at  an  earlier  day  an  elegant 
scholarship;  he  had  a  considerable  knowledge  of  the  politics 
of  his  time  in  most  European  countries,  an  energetic,  intrepid 
spirit,  and  with  him,  as  Macaulay  well  said,  the  science  of 
Parliamentary  debate  seemed  to  be  an  instinct.  There  was 
no  speaker  on  the  ministerial  benches  at  that  time  who  could 
for  a  moment  be  compared  with  him. 

Lord  John  Russell,  who  had  the  leadership  of  the  party 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  was  really  a  much  stronger  man 
than  he  seemed  to  be.  He  had  a  character  for  dauntless 
courage  and  confidence  among  his  friends;  for  boundless 
self-conceit  among  his  enemies.  Every  one  remembers  Syd- 
ney Smith's  famous  illustrations  of  Lord  John  Russell's  un- 
limited faith  in  his  own  power  of  achievement.  Thomas 
Moore  addressed  a  poem  to  him  at  one  time,  when  Lord 
John  Russell  thought  or  talked  of  giving  up  political  life,  in 
which  he  appeals  to  "  thy  genius,  thy  youth,  and  thy  name," 
declares  that  the  instinct  of  the  young  statesman  is  the 
same  as  "  the  eaglet's  to  soar  with  his  eyes  on  the  sun,"  and 
implores  him  not  to  "think  for  an  instant  thy  country  can 
spare  such  a  light  from  her  darkening  horizon  as  thou." 
Later  observers,  to  whom  Lord  John  Russell  appeared  prob- 
ably remarkable  for  a  cold  and  formal  style  as  a  debater, 
and  for  lack  of  originating  power  as  a  statesman,  may  find 
it  diificult  to  reconcile  the  poet's  picture  with  their  own  im- 
pressions of  the  reality.  But  it  is  certain  that  at  one  time 
the  reputation  of  Lord  John  Russell  was  that  of  a  rather 
reckless  man  of  genius,  a  sort  of  Whig  Shelley.  He  had,  in 
truth,  much  less  genius  than  his  friends  and  admirers  be- 
lieved, and  a  great  deal  more  of  practical  strength  than 
either  friends  or  foes  gave  him  credit  for.  He  became,  not 
indeed  an  orator,  but  a  very  keen  debater,  who  was  espe- 
cially effective  in  a  cold,  irritating  sarcasm  which  penetrated 
the  weakness  of  an  opponent's  argument  like  some  dissolv- 
ing acid.  In  the  poem  from  which  we  have  quoted,  Moore 
speaks  of  the  eloquence  of  his  noble  friend  as  "not  like  those 
rills  from  a  height,  which  sparkle  and  foam  and  in  vapor 
are  o'er;  but  a  current  that  works  out  its  way  into  light 
through  the  filtering  recesses  of  thought  and  of  lore."  Al- 
lowing for  the  exaggeration  of  friendship  and  poetry,  this 
is  not  a  bad  description  of  what  Lord  John  Russell's  style 


STATESMEN   AND   PARTIES.  33 

became  at  its  best.  The  thin  bright  stream  of  argument 
worked  its  way  slowly  out,  and  contrived  to  wear  a  path 
for  itself  through  obstacles  which  at  first  the  looker-on 
might  have  felt  assured  it  never  could  penetrate.  Lord 
John  Kussell's  swordsmanship  was  the  swordsmanship  of 
Saladin,  and  not  that  of  stout  King  Richard.  But  it  was 
very  effective  sword-play  in  its  own  way.  Our  English  sys- 
tem of  government  by  party  makes  the  history  of  Parlia- 
ment seem  like  that  of  a  succession  of  great  political  duels. 
Two  men  stand  constantly  confronted  during  a  series  of 
years,  one  of  whom  is  at  the  head  of  the  Government,  while 
the  other  is  at  the  head  of  the  Opposition.  They  change 
places  with  each  victory.  The  conqueror  goes  into  office; 
the  conquered  into  opposition.  This  is  not  the  place  to  dis- 
cuss either  the  merits  or  the  probable  duration  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  government  by  party;  it  is  enough  to  say  here 
that  it  undoubtedly  gives  a  very  animated  and  varied  com- 
plexion to  our  political  struggles,  and  invests  them,  indeed, 
with  much  of  the  glow  and  passion  of  actual  warfare.  It 
has  often  happened  that  the  two  leading  opponents  are  men 
of  intellectual  and  oratorical  powers  so  fairly  balanced  that 
their  followers  may  well  dispute  among  themselves  as  to 
the  superiority  of  their  respective  chiefs,  and  that  the  public 
in  general  may  become  divided  into  two  schools,  not  merely 
political,  but  even  critical,  according  to  their  partiality  for 
one  or  the  other;  We  still  dispute  as  to  whether  Fox  or 
Pitt  was  the  greater  leader,  the  greater  orator ;  it  is  prob- 
able that  for  a  long  time  to  come  the  same  question  will 
be  asked  by  political  students  about  Gladstone  and  Disra- 
eli. For  many  years  Lord  John  Russell  and  Sir  Robert 
Peel  stood  thus  opposed.  They  will  often  come  into  con- 
trast and  comparison  in  these  pages.  For  the  present  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  Peel  had  by  far  the  more  original  mind, 
and  that  Lord  John  Russell  never  obtained  so  great  an  in- 
fluence over  the  House  of  Commons  as  that  which  his  rival 
long  enjoyed.  The  heat  of  political  passion  afterward  in- 
duced a  bitter  critic  to  accuse  Peel  of  lack  of  originality  be- 
cause he  assimilated  readily  and  turned  to  account  the  ideas 
of  other  men.  Not  merely  the  criticism,  but  the  principle 
on  which  it  was  founded,  was  altogether  wrong.  It  ought 
to  be  left  to  children  to  suppose  that  nothing  is  original  but 

2* 


34  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

that  which  we  make  up,  as  the  childish  phrase  is,  "  out  of 
our  own  heads."  Originality  in  politics,  as  in  every  field 
of  art,  consists  in  the  use  and  application  of  the  ideas  which 
we  get  or  are  given  to  us.  The  greatest  proof  Sir  Robert 
Peel  ever  gave  of  high  and  genuine  statesmanship  was  in 
his  recognition  that  the  time  had  come  to  put  into  practi- 
cal legislation  the  principles  which  Cobden  and  Villiers  and 
Bright  had  been  advocating  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
Lord  John  Russell  was  a  born  reformer.  He  had  sat  at  the 
feet  of  Fox.  He  was  cradled  in  the  principles  of  Liberalism. 
He  held  faithfully  to  his  creed ;  he  was  one  of  its  boldest 
and  keenest  champions.  He  had  great  advantages  over 
Peel,  in  the  mere  fact  that  he  had  begun  his  education  in  a 
more  enlightened  school.  But  he  wanted  passion  quite  as 
much  as  Peel  did,  and  remained  still  farther  than  Peel  be- 
low the  level  of  the  genuine  orator.  Russell,  as  we  have 
said,  had  not  long  held  the  post  of  leader  of  the  House  of 
Commons  when  the  first  Parliament  of  Queen  Victoria  as- 
sembled. He  was  still,  in  a  manner,  on  trial ;  and  even 
among  his  friends,  perhaps  especially  among  his  friends, 
there  were  whispers  that  his  confidence  in  himself  was 
greater  than  his  capacity  for  leadership. 

After  the  chiefs  of  Ministry  and  of  Opposition,  the  most 
conspicuous  figure  in  the  House  of  Commons  was  the  colos- 
sal form  of  O'Connell,  the  great  Irish  agitator,  of  whom  we 
shall  hear  a  good  deal  more.  Among  the  foremost  orators 
of  the  House  at  that  time  was  O'Connell's  impassioned  lieu- 
tenant, Richard  Lalor  Sheil.  It  is  curious  how  little  is  now 
remembered  of  Sheil,  whom  so  many  well-qualified  authori- 
ties declaimed  to  be  a  genuine  orator.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in 
one  of  his  novels,  speaks  of  SheiPs  eloquence  in  terms  of  the 
highest  praise,  and  disparages  Canning.  It  is  but  a  short 
time  since  Mr.  Gladstone  selected  Sheil  as  one  of  three  re- 
markable illustrations  of  great  success  as  a  speaker,  achieved 
in  spite  of  serious  defects  of  voice  and  delivery ;  the  other 
two  examples  being  Dr.  Chalmers  and  Dr.  Newman.  Mr. 
Gladstone  described  Shell's  voice  as  like  nothing  but  the 
sound  produced  by  "a  tin  kettle  battered  about  from  place 
to  place,"  knocking  first  against  one  side  and  then  against 
another.  "In  anybody  else,"  Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  say, 
"I  would  not,  if  it  had  been  in  my  choice,  like  to  have  lis- 


STATESMEN   AND   PARTIES.  35 

tened  to  that  voice;  but  in  him  I  would  not  have  changed 
it,  for  it  was  part  of  a  most  remarkable  whole,  and  nobody 
ever  felt  it  painful  while  listening  to  it.  He  was  a  great  or- 
ator, and  an  orator  of  much  preparation,  I  believe,  carried 
even  to  words,  with  a  very  vivid  imagination  and  an  enor- 
mous power  of  language,  and  of  strong  feeling.  There  was 
a  peculiar  character,  a  sort  of  half-wildness  in  his  aspect  and 
delivery;  his  whole  figure,  and  his  delivery,  and  his  voice 
and  his  matter,  were  all  in  such  perfect  keeping  with  one 
another  that  they  formed  a  great  Parliamentary  picture; 
and  although  it  is  now  thirty-five  years  since  I  heard  Mr. 
Sheil,  my  recollection  of  him  is  just  as  vivid  as  if  I  had  been 
listening  to  him  to-day."  This  surely  is  a  picture  of  a  great 
orator,  as  Mr.  Gladstone  says  Sheil  was.  Nor  is  it  easy  to 
understand  how  a  man,  without  being  a  great  orator,  could 
have  persuaded  two  experts  of  such  very  different  schools 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Mr.  Disraeli  that  he  deserved  such  a 
name.  Yet  the  after-years  have  in  a  curious  but  unmistak- 
able way  denied  the  claims  of  Sheil.  Perhaps  it  is  because, 
if  he  really  was  an  orator,  he  was  that  and  nothing  more, 
that  our  practical  age,  finding  no  mark  left  by  him  on  Par- 
liament or  politics,  has  declined  to  take  much  account  even 
of  his  eloquence.  His  career  faded  away  into  second-class 
ministerial  office,  and  closed  at  last,  somewhat  prematurely, 
in  the  little  court  of  Florence,  where  he  was  sent  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  England.  He  is  worth  mentioning  here,  be- 
cause he  had  the  promise  of  a  splendid  reputation  ;  because 
the  charm  of  his  eloquence  evidently  lingered  long  in  the 
memories  of  those  to  whom  it  was  once  familiar,  and  be- 
cause his  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  illustrations  of  that 
career  of  Irish  agitator,  which  begins  in  stormy  opposition 
to  English  government,  and  subsides  after  awhile  into  meek 
recognition  of  its  title  and  adoption  of  its  ministerial  uni- 
form. O'Connell  we  have  passed  over  for  the  present,  be- 
cause we  shall  hear  of  him  again  ;  but  of  Sheil  it  is  not  nec- 
essary that  we  should  hear  any  more. 

This  was  evidently  a  remarkable  Parliament,  with  Russell 
for  the  leader  of  one  party,  and  Peel  for  the  leader  of  anoth- 
er; with  O'Connell  and  Sheil  as  independent  supporters  of 
the  ministry;  with  Mr.  Gladstone  still  comparatively  new 
to  public  life,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  to  address  the  Commons  for 


3b  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  first  time ;  with  Palmerston  still  unrecognized,  and  Stan- 
ley lately  gone  over  to  Conservatism,  itself  the  newest  in- 
vented thing  in  politics ;  with  Grote  and  Bulwer,  and  Joseph 
Hume  and  Charles  Buller ;  and  Ward  and  Villiers,  Sir  Fran- 
cis Burdett  and  Smith  O'Brien,  and  the  Radical  Alcibiades 
of  Finsbury,  "Tom"  Duncombe. 


CHAPTER  III. 

CANADA    AND    LORD    DURHAM. 

THE  first  disturbance  to  the  quiet  and  good  promise  of 
the  new  reign  came  from  Canada.  The  Parliament  which 
we  have  described  met  for  the  first  time  on  November  20th, 
1837,  and  was  to  have  been  adjourned  to  February  1st,  1838 ; 
but  the  news  which  began  to  arrive  from  Canada  was  so 
alarming,  that  the  ministry  were  compelled  to  change  their 
purpose  and  fix  the  reassembling  of  the  Houses  for  January 
16th.  The  disturbances  in  Canada  had  already  broken  out 
into  open  rebellion. 

The  condition  of  Canada  was  very  peculiar.  Lower  or 
Eastern  Canada  was  inhabited  for  the  most  part  by  men  of 
French  descent,  who  still  kept  up  in  the  midst  of  an  active 
and  moving  civilization  most  of  the  principles  and  usages 
which  belonged  to  France  before  the  Revolution.  Even  to 
this  day,  after  all  the  changes,  political  and  social,  that  have 
taken  place,  the  traveller  from  Europe  sees  in  many  of  the 
towns  of  Lower  Canada  an  old-fashioned  France,  such  as  he 
had  known  otherwise  only  in  books  that  tell  of  France  be- 
fore '89.  Nor  is  this  only  in  small  sequestered  towns  and 
villages  which  the  impulses  of  modern  ways  have  yet  failed 
to  reach.  In  busy  and  trading  Montreal,  with  its  residents 
made  up  of  Englishmen,  Scotchmen,  and  Americans,  as  well 
as  the  men  of  French  descent,  the  visitor  is  more  immediate- 
ly conscious  of  the  presence  of  what  may  be  called  an  old- 
fashioned  Catholicism  than  he  is  in  Paris,  or  even  indeed 
in  Rome.  In  Quebec,  a  city  which  for  picturesqueness  and 
beauty  of  situation  is  not  equalled  by  Edinburgh  or  Flor- 
ence, the  curious  interest  of  the  place  is  further  increased, 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.  37 

the  novelty  of  the  sensations  it  produces  in  the  visitor  is 
made  more  piquant,  by  the  evidences  he  meets  with  every- 
where, through  its  quaint  and  steepy  streets  and  under  its 
antiquated  archways,  of  the  existence  of  a  society  which  has 
hardly  in  France  survived  the  Great  Revolution.  At  the 
opening  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign,  the  undiluted  character 
of  this  French  medievalism  was,  of  course,  much  more  re- 
markable. It  would  doubtless  have  exhibited  itself  quiet- 
ly enough  if  it  were  absolutely  undiluted.  Lower  Canada 
would  have  dozed  away  in  its  sleepy  picturesqueness,  held 
fast  to  its  ancient  ways,  and  allowed  a  bustling,  giddy  world, 
all  alive  with  commerce  and  ambition,  and  desire  for  novel- 
ty and  the  terribly  disturbing  thing  which  unresting  people 
called  progress,  to  rush  on  its  wild  path  unheeded.  But  its 
neighbors  and  its  newer  citizens  were  not  disposed  to  allow 
Lower  Canada  thus  to  rot  itself  in  ease  on  the  decaying 
wharves  of  the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  St.  Charles.  In  the 
large  towns  there  were  active  traders  from  England  and 

o  o 

other  countries,  who  were  by  no  means  content  to  put  up 
with  Old- World  ways,  and  to  let  the  magnificent  resources 
of  the  place  run  to  waste.  Upper  Canada,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  all  new  as  to  its  population,  and  was  full  of  the  modern 
desire  for  commercial  activity.  Upper  Canada  was  peopled 
almost  exclusively  by  inhabitants  from  Great  Britain. 
Scotch  settlers,  with  all  the  energy  and  push  of  their  coun- 
try ;  men  from  the  northern  province  of  Ireland,  who  might 
be  described  as  virtually  Scotch  also,  came  there.  The  emi- 
grant from  the  south  of  Ireland  went  to  the  United  States 
because  he  found  there  a  country  more  or  less  hostile  to  Eng- 
land, and  because  there  the  Catholic  Church  was  understood 
to  be  flourishing.  The  Ulsterman  went  to  Canada  as  the 
Scotchman  did,  because  he  saw  the  flag  of  England  flyinor, 

o  o  j          o  ? 

and  the  principle  of  religious  establishment  which  he  admired 
at  home  still  recognized.  It  is  almost  needless  to  say  that 
Englishmen  in  great  numbers  were  settled  there,  whose  chief 
desire  was  to  make  the  colony  as  far  as  possible  a  copy  of 
the  institutions  of  England.  When  Canada  was  ceded  to 
England  by  France,  as  a  consequence  of  the  victories  of 
Wolfe,  the  population  was  nearly  all  in  the  lower  province, 
and  therefore  was  nearly  all  of  French  origin.  Since  the 
cession  the  growth  of  the  population  of  the  other  province 


38  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

had  been  surprisingly  rapid,  and  had  been  almost  exclusive- 
ly the  growth,  as  we  have  seen,  of  immigration  from  Great 
Britain,  one  or  two  of  the  colonizing  states  of  the  European 
continent,  and  the  American  Republic  itself. 

It  is  easy  to  see  on  the  very  face  of  things  some  of  the  dif- 
ficulties which  must  arise  in  the  development  of  such  a  sys- 
tem. The  French  of  Lower  Canada  would  regard  with  al- 
most morbid  jealousy  any  legislation  which  appeared  likely 
to  interfere  with  their  ancient  ways  and  to  give  any  advan- 
tage or  favor  to  the  populations  of  British  descent.  The 
latter  would  see  injustice  or  feebleness  in  every  measure 
which  did  not  assist  them  in  developing  their  more  energetic 
ideas.  The  home  Government,  in  such  a  condition  of  things, 
often  has  especial  trouble  with  those  whom  we  may  call  its 
own  people.  Their  very  loyalty  to  the  institutions  of  the 
Old  Country  impels  them  to  be  unreasonable  and  exacting. 
It  is  not  easy  to  make  them  understand  why  they  should 
not  be  at  the  least  encouraged,  if  not  indeed  actually  ena- 
bled, to  carry  boldly  out  the  Anglicizing  policy  which  they 
clearly  see  is  to  be  for  the  good  of  the  colony  in  the  end. 
The  Government  has  all  the  difficulty  that  the  mother  of  a 
household  has  when,  with  the  best  intentions  and  the  most 
conscientious  resolve  to  act  impartially,  she  is  called  upon  to 
manage  her  own  children  and  the  children  of  her  husband's 
former  marriage.  Every  word  she  says,  every  resolve  she  is 
induced  to  acknowledge,  is  liable  to  be  regarded  with  jeal- 
ousy and  dissatisfaction  on  the  one  side  as  well  as  on  the 
other.  "  You  are  doing  everything  to  favor  your  own  chil- 
dren," the  one  set  cry  out.  "You  ought  to  do  something 
more  for  your  own  children,"  is  the  equally  querulous  re- 
monstrance of  the  other. 

It  would  have  been  difficult,  therefore,  for  the  home  Gov- 
ernment, however  wise  and  far-seeing  their  policy,  to  make 
the  wheels  of  any  system  run  smoothly  at  once  in  such  a 
colony  as  Canada.  But  their  policy  certainly  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  either  wise  or  far-seeing.  The  plan  of  govern- 
ment adopted  looks  as  if  it  were  especially  devised  to  bring 
out  into  sharp  relief  all  the  antagonisms  that  were  natural 
to  the  existing  state  of  things.  By  an  Act  called  the  Con- 
stitution of  1791,  Canada  was  divided  into  two  provinces, 
the  Upper  and  the  Lower.  Each  province  had  a  separate 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.          39 

system  of  government — consisting  of  a  governor;  an  execu- 
tive council  appointed  by  the  Crown,  and  supposed  in  some 
way  to  resemble  the  Privy  Council  of  this  country ;  a  legis- 
lative council,  the  members  of  which  were  appointed  by  the 
Crown  for  life ;  and  a  representative  assembly,  the  members 
of  which  were  elected  for  four  years.  At  the  same  time  the 
clergy  reserves  were  established  by  Parliament.  One-sev- 
enth of  the  waste  lands  of  the  colony  was  set  aside  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  Protestant  clergy — a  fruitful  source  of 
disturbance  and  ill-feeling. 

When  the  two  provinces  were  divided  in  1791,  the  inten- 
tion was  that  they  should  remain  distinct  in  fact  as  well  as 
in  name.  It  was  hoped  that  Lower  Canada  would  remain 
altogether  French,  and  that  Upper  Canada  would  be  exclu- 
sively English.  Then  it  was  thought  that  they  might  be 
governed  on  their  separate  systems  as  securely  and  with  as 
little  trouble  as  we  now  govern  the  Mauritius  on  one  system 
and  Malta  on  another. 

Those  who  formed  such  an  idea  do  not  seem  to  have  taken 
any  counsel  with  geography.  The  one  fact,  that  Upper  Can- 
ada can  hardly  be  said  to  have  any  means  of  communication 
with  Europe  and  the  whole  Eastern  world  except  through 
Lower  Canada,  or  else  through  the  United  States,  ought  to 
have  settled  the  question  at  once.  It  was  in  Lower  Canada 
that  the  greatest  difficulties  arose.  A  constant  antagonism 
grew  up  between  the  majority  of  the  legislative  council,  who 
were  nominees  of  the  Crown,  and  the  majority  of  the  repre- 
sentative assembly,  who  were  elected  by  the  population  of 
the  province.  The  home  Government  encouraged,  and  in- 
deed kept  up,  that  most  odious  and  dangerous  of  all  instru- 
ments for  the  supposed  management  of  a  colony — a  "British 
party"  devoted  to  the  so-called  interests  of  the  mother-coun- 
try, and  obedient  to  the  word  of  command  from  their  mas- 
ters and  patrons  at  home.  The  majority  in  the  legislative 
council  constantly  thwarted  the  resolutions  of  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  the  popular  assembly.  Disputes  arose  as  to  the 
voting  of  supplies.  The  Government  retained  in  their  ser- 
vice officials  whom  the  representative  assembly  had  con- 
demned, and  insisted  on  the  right  to  pay  them  their  salaries 
out  of  certain  funds  of  the  colony.  The  representative  as- 
sembly took  to  stopping  the  supplies,  and  the  Government 


40  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

claimed  the  right  to  counteract  this  measure  by  appropriat- 
ing to  the  purpose  such  public  moneys  as  happened  to  be 
within  their  reach  at  the  time.  The  colony — for  indeed  on 
these  subjects  the  population  of  Lower  Canada,  right  or 
wrong,  was  so  near  to  being  of  one  mind  that  we  may  take 
the  declarations  of  public  meetings  as  representing  the  colo- 
ny— demanded  that  the  legislative  council  should  be  made 
elective,  and  that  the  colonial  government  should  not  be  al- 
lowed to  dispose  of  the  moneys  of  the  colony  at  their  pleas- 
ure. The  House  of  Commons  and  the  Government  here  re- 
plied by  refusing  to  listen  to  the  proposal  to  make  the  legis- 
lative council  an  elective  body,  and  authorizing  the  provin- 
cial government,  without  the  consent  of  the  colonial  repre- 
sentation to  appropriate  the  money  in  the  treasury  for  the 
administration  of  justice  and  the  maintenance  of  the  execu- 
tive system.  This  was,  in  plain  words,  to  announce  to  the 
French  population,  who  made  up  the  vast  majority,  and 
whom  we  had  taught  to  believe  in  the  representative  form 
of  government,  that  their  wishes  would  never  count  for  any- 
thing, and  that  the  colony  was  to  be  ruled  solely  at  the 
pleasure  of  the  little  British  party  of  officials  and  Crown  nom- 
inees. It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  in  all  these  dis- 
putes the  popular  majority  were  in  the  right  and  the  officials 
in  the  wrong.  No  one  can  doubt  that  there  was  much  bit- 
terness of  feeling  arising  out  of  the  mere  differences  of  race. 
The  French  and  the  English  could  not  be  got  to  blend.  In 
some  places,  as  it  was  afterward  said  in  the  famous  report  of 
Lord  Durham,  the  two  sets  of  colonists  never  publicly  met 
together  except  in  the  jury-box,  and  then  only  for  the  ob- 
struction of  justice.  The  British  residents  complained  bit- 
terly of  being  subject  to  French  law  and  procedure  in  so 
many  of  their  affairs.  The  tenure  of  land  and  many  other 
conditions  of  the  system  were  antique  French,  and  the  French 
law  worked,  or  rather  did  not  work,  in  civil  affairs  side  by 
side  with  the  equally  impeded  British  law  in  criminal  mat- 
ters. At  last  the  representative  assembly  refused  to  vote 
any  further  supplies  or  to  carry  on  any  further  business. 
They  formulated  their  grievances  against  the  home  Govern- 
ment. Their  complaints  Avere  of  arbitrary  conduct  on  the 
part  of. the  governors;  intolerable  composition  of  the  legis- 
lative council,  which  they  insisted  ought  to  be  elective;  ille- 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.  41 

gal  appropriation  of  the  public  money;  and  violent  proroga- 
tion of  the  provincial  Parliament. 

One  of  the  leading  men  in  the  movement  which  afterward 
became  rebellion  in  Lower  Canada  was  Mr.  Louis  Joseph 
Papineau.  This  man  had  risen  to  high  position  by  his  tal- 
ents, his  energy,  and  his  undoubtedly  honorable  character. 
He  had  represented  Montreal  in  the  Representative  Assem- 
bly of  Lower  Canada,  and  he  afterward  became  Speaker  of 
the  House.  He  made  himself  leader  of  the  movement  to 
protest  against  the  policy  of  the  governors,  and  that  of  the 
Government  at  home,  by  whom  they  were  sustained.  He 
held  a  series  of  meetings,  at  some  of  which  undoubtedly 
rather  strong  language  was  used,  arid  too  frequent  and  sig- 
nificant appeals  were  made  to  the  example  held  out  to  the 
population  of  Lower  Canada  by  the  successful  revolt  of  the 
United  States.  Mr.  Papineau  also  planned  the  calling  to- 
gether of  a  great  convention  to  discuss  and  proclaim  the 
grievances  of  the  colonies.  Lord  Gosford,  the  governor,  be- 
gan by  dismissing  several  militia  officers  who  had  taken 
part  in  some  of  these  demonstrations ;  Mr.  Papineau  him- 
self was  an  officer  of  this  force.  Then  the  governor  issued 
warrants  for  the  apprehension  of  many  members  of  the  pop- 
ular Assembly  on  the  charge  of  high -treason.  Some  of 
these  at  once  left  the  country ;  others  against  whom  war- 
rants were  issued  were  arrested,  and  a  sudden  resistance 
was  made  by  their  friends  and  supporters.  Then,  in  the 
manner  familiar  to  all  who  have  read  anything  of  the  his- 
tory of  revolutionary  movements,  the  resistance  to  a  capture 
of  prisoners  suddenly  transformed  itself  into  open  rebellion. 

The  rebellion  was  not,  in  a  military  sense,  a  very  great 
thing.  At  its  first  outbreak  the  military  authorities  were 
for  a  moment  surprised,  and  the  rebels  obtained  one  or  two 
trifling  advantages.  But  the  commander- in-chief  at  once 
showed  energy  adequate  to  the  occasion,  and  used,  as  it  was 
his  duty  to  do,  a  strong  hand  in  putting  the  movement 
down.  The  rebels  fought  with  something  like  desperation 
in  one  or  two  instances,  and  there  was,  it  must  be  said,  a 
good  deal  of  blood  shed.  The  disturbance,  however,  after 
awhile  extended  to  the  upper  province.  Upper  Canada  too 
had  its  complaints  against  its  governors  and  the  home  Gov- 
ernment, and  its  protests  against  having  its  offices  all  dis- 


42  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

posed  of  by  a  "family  compact;"  but  the  rebellious  move- 
ment does  not  seem  to  have  taken  a  genuine  hold  of  the 
province  at  any  time.  There  was  some  discontent ;  there 
was  a  constant  stimulus  to  excitement  kept  up  from  across 
the  American  frontier  by  sympathizers  with  any  republican 
movement ;  and  there  were  some  excitable  persons  inclined 
for  revolutionary  change  in  the  province  itself  whose  zeal 
caught  fire  when  the  flame  broke  out  in  Lower  Canada. 
But  it  seems  to  have  been  an  exotic  movement  altogether, 
and,  so  far  as  its  military  history  is  concerned,  deserves  no- 
tice chiefly  for  the  chivalrous  eccentricity  of  the  plan  by 
which  the  governor  of  the  province  undertook  to  put  it 
down.  The  governor  was  the  gallant  and  fanciful  soldier 
and  traveller,  Sir  Francis,  then  Major,  Head.  He  who  had 
fought  at  Waterloo,  and  seen  much  service  besides,  was 
quietly  performing  the  duties  of  Assistant  Poor  Law  Com- 
missioner for  the  county  of  Kent,  when  he  was  summoned, 
in  1835,  at  a  moment's  notice,  to  assume  the  governorship 
of  Upper  Canada.  When  the  rebellion  broke  out  in  that 
province,  Major  Head  proved  himself  not  merely  equal  to 
the  occasion,  but  boldly  superior  to  it.  He  promptly  re- 
solved to  win  a  grand  moral  victory  over  all  rebellion  then 
and  for  the  future.  He  was  seized  with  a  desire  to  show  to 
the  whole  world  how  vain  it  was  for  any  disturber  to  think 
of  shaking  the  loyalty  of  the  province  under  his  control. 
He  issued  to  rebellion  in  general  a  challenge  not  unlike  that 
which  Shakspeare's  Prince  Harry  offers  to  the  chiefs  of  the 
insurrection  against  Henry  IV.  He  invited  it  to  come  on 
and  settle  the  controversy  by  a  sort  of  duel.  He  sent  all 
the  regular  soldiers  out  of  the  province  to  the  help  of  the 
authorities  of  Lower  Canada ;  he  allowed  the  rebels  to  ma- 
ture their  plans  in  any  way  they  liked ;  he  permitted  them 
to  choose  their  own  day  and  hour,  and  when  they  were 
ready  to  begin  their  assaults  on  constituted  authority,  he 
summoned  to  his  side  the  militia  and  all  the  loyal  inhabi- 
tants, and  with  their  help  he  completely  extinguished  the 
rebellion.  It  was  but  a  very  trifling  affair ;  it  went  out  or 
collapsed  in  a  moment.  Major  Head  had  his  desire.  He 
showed  that  rebellion  in  that  province  was  not  a  thing  se- 
rious enough  to  call  for  the  intervention  of  regular  troops. 
The  loyal  colonists  were  for  the  most  part  delighted  with 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.  43 

the  spirited  conduct  of  their  leader  and  his  new-fashioned 
way  of  dealing  with  rebellion.  No  doubt  the  moral  effect 
was  highly  imposing.  The  plan  was  almost  as  original  as 
that  described  in  Herodotus  and  introduced  into  one  of 
Massinger's  plays,  when  the  moral  authority  of  the  masters 
is  made  to  assert  itself  over  the  rebellious  slaves  by  the 
mere  exhibition  of  the  symbolic  whip.  But  the  authorities 
at  home  took  a  somewhat  more  prosaic  view  of  the  policy 
of  Sir  Francis  Head.  It  was  suggested  that  if  the  fears  of 
many  had  been  realized,  and  the  rebellion  had  been  aided 
by  a  large  force  of  sympathizers  from  the  United  States,  the 
moral  authority  of  Canadian  loyalty  might  have  stood 
greatly  in  need  of  the  material  presence  of  regular  troops. 
In  the  end  Sir  Francis  Head  resigned  his  office.  His  loyal- 
ty, courage,  and  success  were  acknowledged  by  the  gift  of  a 
baronetcy  ;  and  he  obtained  the  admiration  not  merely  of 
those  who  approved  his  policy,  but  even  of  many  among 
those  who  felt  bound  to  condemn  it.  Perhaps  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  there  were  some  who  persisted  to  the  last 
in  the  belief  that  Sir  Francis  Head  was  not  by  any  means 
so  rashly  chivalrous  as  he  had  allowed  himself  to  be  thought, 
and  that  he  had  full  preparation  made,  if  his  moral  demon- 
stration should  fail,  to  supply  its  place  in  good  time  with 
more  commonplace  and  effective  measures. 

The  news  of  the  outbreaks  in  Canada  created  a  natural 
excitement  in  this  countiy.  There  was  a  very  strong  feel- 
ing of  sympathy  among  many  classes  here  —  not,  indeed, 
with  the  rebellion,  but  with  the  colony  which  complained 
of  what  seemed  to  be  genuine  and  serious  grievances.  Pub- 
lic meetings  were  held  at  which  resolutions  were  passed 
ascribing  the  disturbances,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  refusal 
by  the  Government  of  any  redress  sought  for  by  the  colo- 
nists. Mr.  Hume,  the  pioneer  of  financial  reform,  took  the 
side  of  the  colonists  very  warmly,  both  in  and  out  of  Parlia- 
ment. During  one  of  the  Parliamentary  debates  on  the  sub- 
ject, Sir  Robert  Peel  referred  to  the  principal  leader  of  the 
rebellion  in  Upper  Canada  as  "  a  Mr.  Mackenzie."  Mr. 
Hume  resented  this  way  of  speaking  of  a  prominent  colo- 
nist, and  remarked  that  "  there  was  a  Mr.  Mackenzie  as 
there  might  be  a  Sir  Robert  Peel,"  and  created  some  amuse- 
ment by  referring  to  the  declarations  of  Lord  Chatham  on 


44  -  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  American  Stamp  Act,  which  he  cited  as  the  opinions  of 
"  a  Mr.  Pitt."  Lord  John  Russell,  on  the  part  of  the  Govern- 
ment, introduced  a  bill  to  deal  with  the  rebellious  province. 
The  bill  proposed,  in  brief,  to  suspend  for  a  time  the  con- 
stitution of  Lower  Canada,  and  to  send  out  from  this  coun- 
try a  governor -general  and  high -commissioner,  with  full 
powers  to  deal  with  the  rebellion,  and  to  remodel  the  con- 
stitution of  both  provinces.  The  proposal  met  with  a  good 
deal  of  opposition  at  first  on  very  different  grounds.  Mr. 
Roebuck,  who  was  then,  as  it  happened,  out  of  Parliament, 
appeai'ed  as  the  agent  and  representative  of  the  province  of 
Lower  Canada,  and  demanded  to  be  heard  at  the  bar  of  both 
the  Houses  in  opposition  to  the  bill.  After  some  little  de- 
mur his  demand  was  granted,  and  he  stood  at  the  bar,  first 
of  the  Commons,  and  then  of  the  Lords,  and  opposed  the 
bill  on  the  ground  that  it  unjustly  suspended  the  constitu- 
tion of  Lower  Canada  in  consequence  of  disturbances  pro- 
voked by  the  intolerable  oppression  of  the  home  Govern- 
ment. A  critic  of  that  day  remarked  that  most  orators 
seemed  to  make  it  their  business  to  conciliate  and  propitiate 
the  audience  they  desired  to  win  over,  but  that  Mr.  Roebuck 
seemed  from  the  very  first  to  be  determined  to  set  all  his 
hearers  against  him  and  his  cause.  Mr.  Roebuck's  speeches 
were,  however,  exceedingly  argumentative  and  powerful  ap- 
peals. Their  effect  was  enhanced  by  the  singularly  youth- 
ful appearance  of  the  speaker,  who  is  described  as  looking 
like  a  boy  hardly  out  of  his  teens. 

It  was  evident,  however,  that  the  proposal  of  the  Govern- 
ment must  in  the  main  be  adopted.  The  general  opinion  of 
Parliament  decided,  not  unreasonably,  that  that  was  not  the 
moment  for  entering  into  a  consideration  of  the  past  policy 
of  the  Government,  and  that  the  country  could  do  nothing 
better  just  then  than  send  out  some  man  of  commanding 
ability  and  character  to  deal  with  the  existing  condition  of 
things.  There  was  an  almost  universal  admission  that  the 
Government  had  found  the  right  man  when  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell mentioned  the  name  of  Lord  Durham. 

Lord  Durham  was  a  man  of  remarkable  character.  It  is 
a  matter  of  surprise  how  little  his  name  is  thought  of  by  the 
present  generation,  seeing  what  a  strenuous  figure  he  seemed 
in  the  eyes  of  his  contemporaries,  and  how  striking  a  part  he 


CANADA  AND  LOED  DUKHAM.   *        45 

played  in  the  politics  of  a  time  which  has  even  still  some  living 
representatives.  He  belonged  to  one  of  the  oldest  families 
in  England.  The  Lambtons  had  lived  on  their  estate  in  the 
North,  in  uninterrupted  succession,  since  the  Conquest.  The 
male  succession,  it  is  stated,  never  was  interrupted  since  the 
twelfth  century.  They  were  not,  however,  a  family  of  aris- 
tocrats. Their  wealth  was  derived  chiefly  from  coal  mines, 
and  grew  up  in  later  days ;  the  property  at  first,  and  for  a 
long  time,  was  of  inconsiderable  value.  For  more  than  a 
century,  however,  the  Lambtons  had  come  to  take  rank 
among  the  gentry  of  the  county,  and  some  member  of  the 
family  had  represented  the  city  of  Durham  in  the  House  of 
Commons  from  1727  until  the  early  death  of  Lord  Durham's 
father  in  December,  1797.  William  Henry  Lambton,  Lord 
Durham's  father,  was  a  stanch  Whig,  and  had  been  a  friend 
and  associate  of  Fox.  John  George  Lambton,  the  son,  was 
born  at  Lambton  Castle  in  April,  1792.  Before  he  was  quite 
twenty  years  of  age,  he  made  a  romantic  marriage  at  Gretna 
Green  with  a  lady  who  died  three  years  after.  He  served 
for  a  short  time  in  a  regiment  of  Hussars.  About  a  year 
after  the  death  of  his  first  wife  he  married  the  eldest  dauo-h- 

o 

ter  of  Lord  Grey.  He  was  then  only  twenty-four  years  of 
age.  He  had  before  this  been  returned  to  Parliament  for 
the  county  of  Durham,  and  he  soon  distinguished  himself 
as  a  very  advanced  and  energetic  reformer.  W^hile  in  the 
Commons  he  seldom  addressed  the  House,  but  when  he  did 
speak,  it  was  in  support  of  some  measure  of  reform,  or 
against  what  he  conceived  to  be  antiquated  and  illiberal 
legislation.  He  brought  out  a  plan  of  his  own  for  Parlia- 
mentary reform  in  1821.  In  1828  he  was  raised  to  the  peer- 
age, with  the  title  of  Baron  Durham.  When  the  ministry 
of  Lord  Grey  was  formed,  in  November,  1830,  Lord  Durham 
became  Lord  Privy  Seal.  He  is  said  to  have  hacl  an  almost 
complete  control  over  Lord  Grey.  He  had  an  impassioned 
and  energetic  nature,  which  sometimes  drove  him  into  out- 
breaks of  feeling  which  most  of  his  colleagues  dreaded.  Va- 

ZJ  O 

rious  highly-colored  descriptions  of  stormy  scenes  between 
him  and  his  companions  in  office  are  given  by  writers  of  the 
time.  Lord  Durham,  his  enemies  and  some  of  his  friends 
said,  bullied  and  browbeat  his  opponents  in  the  cabinet, 
and  would  sometimes  hardly  allow  his  father-in-law  and  of- 


46  •  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ficial  chief  a  chance  of  putting  in  a  word  on  the  other  side, 
or  in  mitigation  of  his  tempestuous  mood.  He  was  thor- 
ough in  his  reforming  purposes,  and  would  have  rushed  at 
radical  changes  with  scanty  consideration  for  the  time  or 
for  the  temper  of  his  opponents.  He  had  very  little  rever- 
ence indeed  for  what  Carlyle  calls  the  majesty  of  custom. 
Whatever  he  wished  he  strongly  wished.  He  had  no  idea 
of  reticence,  and  cared  not  much  for  the  decorum  of  office. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  believe  all  the  stories  told  by  those 
who  hated  and  dreaded  Lord  Durham,  in  order  to  accept 
the  belief  that  he  really  was  somewhat  of  an  enfant  terrible 
to  the  stately  Lord  Grey,  and  to  the  easy-going  colleagues 
who  were  by  no  means  absolutely  eaten  up  by  their  zeal  for 
reform.  In  the  powerful  speech  which  he  delivered  in  the 
House  of  Lords  on  the  Reform  Bill  there  is  a  specimen  of 
his  eloquence  of  denunciation  which  might  well  have  star- 
tled listeners,  even  in  those  days  when  the  license  of  speech 
was  often  sadly  out  of  proportion  with  its  legalized  liberty. 
Lord  Durham  was  especially  roused  to  anger  by  some  ob- 
servations made  in  the  debate  of  a  previous  night  by  the 
Bishop  of  Exeter.  He  described  the  prelate's  speech  as  an 
exhibition  of  "  coarse  and  virulent  invective,  malignant  and 
false  insinuation,  the  grossest  perversions  of  historical  facts 
decked  out  with  all  the  choicest  flowers  of  pamphleteering 
slang."  He  was  called  to  order  for  these  words,  and  a  peer 
moved  that  they  be  taken  down.  Lord  Durham  was  by 
no  means  dismayed.  He  coolly  declared  that  he  did  not 
mean  to  defend  his  language  as  the  most  elegant  or  grace- 
ful, but  that  it  exactly  conveyed  the  ideas  regarding  the 
bishop  which  he  meant  to  express;  that  he  believed  the 
bishop's  speech  to  contain  insinuations  which  were  as  false 
as  scandalous ;  that  he  had  said  so ;  that  he  now  begged 
leave  to  repeat  the  words,  and  that  he  paused  to  give  any 
noble  lord  who  thought  fit  an  opportunity  of  taking  them 
down.  Not  one,  however,  seemed  disposed  to  encounter 
any  further  this  impassioned  adversary,  and  when  he  had 
had  his  say,  Lord  Durham  became  somewhat  mollified,  and 
endeavored  to  soften  the  pain  of  the  impression  he  had 
made.  He  begged  the  House  of  Lords  to  make  some  al- 
lowance for  him  if  he  had  spoken  too  warmly ;  for,  as  he 
said  with  much  pathetic  force,  his  mind  had  lately  been 


CANADA  AND  LOUD  DURHAM.          47 

tortured  by  domestic  loss.  He  thus  alluded  to  the  recent 
death  of  his  eldest  son — "  a  beautiful  boy,"  says  a  writer 
of  some  years  ago,  "  whose  features  will  live  forever  in  the 
well-known  picture  by  Lawrence." 

The  whole  of  this  incident — the  fierce  attack  and  the  sud- 
den pathetic  expression  of  regret — will  serve  well  enough  to 
illustrate  the  emotional,  uncontrolled  character  of  Lord  Dur- 
ham. He  was  one  of  the  men  who,  even  when  they  are 
thoroughly  in  the  right,  have  often  the  unhappy  art  of  seem- 
i;ig  to  put  themselves  completely  in  the  wrong.  He  was  the 
most  advanced  of  all  the  reformers  in  the  reforming  ministry 
of  Lord  Grey.  His  plan  of  Reform  in  1821  proposed  to  give 
four  hundred  members  to  certain  districts  of  town  and  coun- 
try, in  which  every  householder  should  have  a  vote.  When 
Lord  Grey  had  formed  his  reform  ministry,  Lord  Durham 
sent  for  Lord  John1  Russell  and  requested  him  to  draw  up  a 
scheme  of  reform.  A  committee  was  formed  on  Lord  Dur- 
ham's suggestion,  consisting  of  Sir  James  Graham,  Lord 
Dimcannon,  Lord  John  Russell,  and  Lord  Durham  himself. 
Lord  John  Russell  drew  up  a  plan,  which  he  published  long 
after,  with  the  alterations  which  Lord  Durham  had  BUO-- 

'  O 

gested  and  written  in  his  own  hand  on  the  margin.  If 
Lord  Durham  had  had  his  way  the  ballot  would  at  that 
time  have  been  included  in  the  programme  of  the  Govern- 
ment ;  and  it  was,  indeed,  understood  that  at  one  period  of 
the  discussions  he  had  won  over  his  colleagues  to  his  opin- 
ion on  that  subject.  He  was,  in  a  word,  the  Radical  mem- 
ber of  the  cabinet,  with  all  the  energy  which  became  such 
a  character;  with  that  "magnificent  indiscretion"  which 
had  been  attributed  to  a  greater  man — Edmund  Burke; 
with  all  that  courage  of  his  opinions  which,  in  the  Frenchi- 
fied phraseology  of  modern  politics,  is  so  much  talked  of,  so 
rarely  found,  and  so  little  trusted  or  successful  when  it  is 
found. 

Not,  long  after  Lord  Durham  was  raised  in  the  peerage 
and  became  an  earl.  His  influence  over  Lord  Grey  contin- 
ued great,  but  his  differences  of  opinion  with  his  former  col- 
leagues— he  had  resigned  his  office — became  greater  and 
greater  every  day.  More  than  once  he  had  taken  the  pub- 
lic into  his  confidence  in  his  characteristic  and  heedless  way. 
He  was  sent  on  a  mission  to  Russia,  perhaps  to  get  him  out 


48  A  HISTORY  OF   OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

of  the  way,  and  afterward  he  was  made  ambassador  at  the 
Russian  court.  In  the  interval  between  his  mission  and  his 
formal  appointment  he  had  come  back  to  England  and  per- 
formed a  series  of  enterprises  which  in  the  homely  and  un- 
dignified language  of  American  politics  would  probably  be 
called  "stumping  the  country."  He  was  looked  to  with 
much  hope  by  the  more  extreme  Liberals  in  the  country,  and 
with  corresponding  dislike  and  dread  by  all  who  thought 
the  country  had  gone  far  enough,  or  much  too  far  in  the 
recent  political  changes. 

None  of  his  opponents,  however,  denied  his  great  ability. 
He  was  never  deterred  by  conventional  beliefs  and  habits 
from  looking  boldly  into  the  very  heart  of  a  great  political 
difficulty.  He  was  never  afraid  to  propose  what,  in  times 
later  than  his,  have  been  called  heroic  remedies.  There  was 
a  general  impression,  perhaps,  even  among  those  who  liked 
him  least,  that  he  was  a  sort  of  "  unemployed  Caesar,"  a  man 
who  only  required  a  field  large  enough  to  develop  great 
qualities  in  the  ruling  of  men.  The  difficulties  in  Canada 
seemed  to  have  come  as  if  expressly  to  give  him  an  opportu- 
nity of  proving  himself  all  that  his  friends  declared  him  to 
be,  or  of  justifying  forever  the  distrust  of  his  enemies.  He 
went  out  to  Canada  with  the  assurance  of  every  one  that 
his  expedition  would  either  make  or  mar  a  career,  if  not  a 
country. 

Lord  Durham  went  out  to  Canada  with  the  brightest 
hopes  and  prospects.  He  took  with  him  two  of  the  men 
best  qualified  in  England  at  that  time  to  make  his  mission 
a  success  —  Mr.  Chai'les  Buller  and  Mr.  Edward  Gibbon 
"Wakefield.  He  understood  that  he  was  going  out  as  a  dic- 
tator, and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  expedition  was  re- 
garded in  this  light  by  England  and  by  the  colonies.  We 
have  remarked  that  people  looked  on  his  mission  as  likely  to 
make  or  mar  a  career,  if  not  a  country.  What  it  did,  how- 
ever, was  somewhat  different  from  that  which  any  one  ex- 
pected. Lord  Durham  found  out  a  new  alternative.  He 
made  a  country,  and  he  marred  a  career.  He  is  distinctly 
the  founder  of  the  system  which  has  since  worked  with  such 
gratifying  success  in  Canada ;  he  is  the  founder,  even,  of  the 
principle  which  allowed  the  quiet  development  of  the  prov- 
inces into  a  confederation  with  neighboring  colonies  under 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.  49 

the  name  of  the  Dominion  of  Canada.  But  the  singular 
quality  which  in  home  politics  had  helped  to  mar  so  much 
of  Lord  Durham's  personal  career  was  in  full  work  during 
his  visit  to  Canada.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  find  in  modern 
political  history  so  curious  an  example  of  splendid  and  last- 
ing success  combined  with  all  the  appearance  of  utter  and 
disastrous  failure.  The  mission  of  Lord  Durham  saved  Can- 
ada. It  ruined  Lord  Durham.  At  the  moment  it  seemed  to 
superficial  observers  to  have  been  as  injurious  to  the  colony 
as  to  the  man. 

Lord  Durham  arrived  in  Quebec  at  the  end  of  May,  1838. 
He  at  once  issued  a  proclamation,  in  style  like  that  of  a  dicta- 
tor. It  was  not  in  any  way  unworthy  of  the  occasion,  which 
especially  called  for  the  intervention  of  a  brave  and  enlight- 
ened dictatorship.  He  declared  that  he  would  unsparingly 
punish  any  who  violated  the  laws,  but  he  frankly  invited  the 
co-operation  of  the  colonies  to  form  a  new  system  of  govern- 
ment really  suited  to  their  wants  and  to  the  altering  condi- 
tions of  civilization.  Unfortunately,  he  had  hardly  entered 
on  his  work  of  dictatorship  when  he  found  that  he  was  no 
longer  a  dictator.  In  the  passing  of  the  Canada  Bill  through 
Parliament  the  powers  which  he  understood  were  to  be  con- 
ferred upon  him  had  been  considerably  reduced.  Lord  Dur- 
ham went  to  woi'k,  however,  as  if  he  were  still  invested  with 
absolute  authority  over  all  the  laws  and  conditions  of  the 
colony.  A  very  Caesar  laying  down  the  lines  for  the  future 
government  of  a  province  could  hardly  have  been  more 
boldly  arbitrary.  Let  it  be  said,  also,  that  Lord  Durham's 
arbitrariness  was  for  the  most  part  healthy  in  effect  and  just 
in  spirit.  But  it  gave  an  immense  opportunity  of  attack  on 
himself  and  on  the  Government  to  the  enemies  of  both  at 
home.  Lord  Durham  had  hardly  begun  his  work  of  recon- 
struction when  his  recall  was  clamored  for  by  vehement 
voices  in  Parliament. 

Lord  Durham  besran  by  issuing  a  series  of  ordinances  in- 

O  »/  O 

tended  to  provide  for  the  security  of  Lower  Canada.  He 
proclaimed  a  very  liberal  amnesty,  to  which,  however,  there 
were  certain  exceptions.  The  leaders  of  the  rebellious 
movement,  Papineau  and  others,  who  had  escaped  from  the 
colony,  were  excluded  from  the  amnesty.  So  likewise  were 
certain  prisoners  who  either  had  voluntarily  confessed  them- 
I.— 3 


50  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

selves  guilty  of  high-treason,  or  had  been  induced  to  make 
such  an  acknowledgment  in  the  hope  ofobtaining  a  mitigated 
punishment.  These  Lord  Durham  ordered  to  be  transported 
to  Bermuda  ;  and  for  any  of  these,  or  of  the  leaders  who  had 
escaped,  who  should  return  to  the  colony  without  permis- 
sion, he  proclaimed  that  they  should  be  deemed  guilty  of 
high-treason,  and  condemned  to  suffer  death.  It  needs  no 
learned  legal  argument  to  prove  that  this  was  a  proceed- 
ing not  to  be  justified  by  any  of  the  ordinary  forms  of  law. 
Lord  Durham  had  not  power  to  transport  any  one  to  Ber- 
muda. He  had  no  authority  over  Bermuda;  he  had  no  au- 
thority which  he  could  delegate  to  the  officials  of  Bermuda 
enabling  them  to  detain  political  prisoners.  Nor  had  he 
any  power  to  declare  that  persons  who  returned  to  the  col- 
ony were  to  be  liable  to  the  punishment  of  death.  It  is  not 
a  capital  offence  by  any  of  the  laws  of  England  for  even  a 
transported  convict  to  break  bounds  and  return  to  his  home. 
All  this  was  quite  illegal ;  that  is  to  say,  was  outside  the 
limits  of  Lord  Durham's  legal  authority.  Lord  Durham  was 
well  aware  of  the  fact.  He  had  not  for  a  moment  supposed 
that  he  was  acting  in  accordance  with  ordinary  English  law. 
He  was  acting  in  the  spirit  of  a  dictator,  at  once  bold  and 
merciful,  who  is  under  the  impression  that  he  has  been  in- 
vested with  extraordinary  powers  for  the  very  reason  that 
the  crisis  does  not  admit  of  the  ordinary  operations  of  law. 
For  the  decree  of  death  to  banished  men  returning  without 
permission,  he  had,  indeed,  the  precedent  and  authority  of 
acts  passed  already  by  the  colonial  Parliament  itself;  but 
Lord  Durham  did  not  care  for  any  such  authority.  He 
found  that  he  had  on  his  hands  a  considerable  number  of 
prisoners  whom  it  would  be  absurd  to  put  on  trial  in  Lower 
Canada  with  the  usual  forms  of  law.  It  would  have  been 
absolutely  impossible  to  get  any  unpacked  jury  to  convict 
them.  They  would  have  been  triumphantly  acquitted.  The 
authority  of  the  Crown  would  have  been  brought  into  great- 
er contempt  than  ever.  So  little  faith  had  the  colonists  in 
the  impartial  working  of  the  ordinary  law  in  the  governor's 
hands,  that  the  universal  impression  in  Lower  Canada  was 
that  Lord  Durham  would  have  the  prisoners  tried  by  a 
packed  jury  of  his  own  officials,  convicted  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  executed  out  of  hand.  It  was  with  amazement 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DUEHAM.  51 

people  found  that  the  new  governor  would  not  stoop  to  the 
infamy  of  packing  a  jury.  Lord  Durham  saw  no  better  way 
out  of  the  difficulty  than  to  impose  a  sort  of  exile  on  those 
who  admitted  their  connection  with  the  rebellion,  and  to 
prevent  by  the  threat  of  a  severe  penalty  the  return  of  those 
who  had  already  fled  from  the  colony.  His  amnesty  meas- 
ure was  large  and  liberal ;  but  he  did  not  see  that  he  could 
allow  prominent  offenders  to  remain  unrebuked  in  the  col- 
ony ;  and  to  attempt  to  bring  them  to  trial  would  have  been 
to  secure  for  them,  not  punishment,  but  public  honor. 

Another  measure  of  Lord  Durham's  was  likewise  open 
to  the  charge  of  excessive  use  of  power.  The  act  which 
appointed  him  prescribed  that  he  should  be  advised  by  a 
council,  and  that  every  ordinance  of  his  should  be  signed 
by  at  least  five  of  its  members.  There  was  already  a  coun- 
cil in  existence  nominated  by  Lord  Durham's  predecessor, 
Sir  J.  Colborne — a  sort  of  provisional  government  put  to- 
gether to  supply  for  the  moment  the  place  of  the  suspended 
political  constitution.  This  council  Lord  Durham  set  aside 
altogether,  and  substituted  for  it  one  of  his  own  making, 
and  composed  chiefly  of  his  secretaries  and  the  members  of 
his  staff.  In  truth,  this  was  but  a  part  of  the  policy  which 
he  had  marked  out  for  himself.  He  was  resolved  to  play 
the  game  which  he  honestly  believed  he  could  play  better 
than  any  one  else.  He  had  in  his  mind,  partly  from  the 
inspiration  of  the  gifted  and  well -instructed  men  who  ac- 
companied and  advised  him,  a  plan  which  he  was  firmly 
convinced  would  be  the  salvation  of  the  colony.  Events 
have  proved  that  he  was  right.  His  disposal  of  the  prison- 
ers was  only  a  clearing  of  the  decks  for  the  great  action  of 
remodelling  the  colony.  He  did  not  allow  a  form  of  law 
to  stand  between  him  and  his  purpose.  Indeed,  as  we  have 
already  said,  he  regarded  himself  as  a  dictator  sent  out  to 
reconstruct  a  whole  system  in  the  best  way  he  could.  When 
he  was  accused  of  having  gone  beyond  the  law,  he  asked 
with  a  scorn  not  wholly  unreasonable :  "  What  are  the  con- 
stitutional principles  remaining  in  force  where  the  whole 
constitution  is  suspended  ?  What  principle  of  the  British 
constitution  holds  good  in  a  country  where  the  people's 
money  is  taken  from  them  without  the  people's  consent ; 
where  representative  government  is  annihilated;  where  mar- 


52  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tial  law  has  been  the  law  of  the  land,  and  where  trial  by 
jury  exists  only  to  defeat  the  ends  of  justice,  and  to  provoke 
the  righteous  scorn  and  indignation  of  the  community?1' 

Still  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  less  impetuous  and  im- 
patient spirit  than  that  of  Lord  Durham  might  have  found 
a  way  of  beginning  his  great  reforms  without  provoking 
such  a  storm  of  hostile  criticism.  He  was,  it  must  ahvays 
be  remembered,  a  dictator  who  only  strove  to  use  his  pow- 
ers for  the  restoration  of  liberty  and  constitutional  govern- 
ment. His  mode  of  disposing  of  his  prisoners  was  arbitrary 
only  in  the  interests  of  mercy.  He  declared  openly  that  he 
did  not  think  it  right  to  send  to  an  ordinary  penal  settle- 
ment, and  thus  brand  with  infamy,  men  whom  the  public 
feeling  of  the  colony  entirely  approved,  and  whose  cause, 
until  they  broke  into  rebellion,  had  far  more  of  right  on  its 
side  than  that  of  the  authority  they  complained  of  could 
claim  to  possess.  He  sent  them  to  Bermuda  simply  as  into 
exile;  to  remove  them  from  the  colony,  but  nothing  more. 
He  lent  the  weight  of  this  authority  to  the  colonial  Act, 
which  prescribed  the  penalty  of  death  for  returning  to  the 
colony,  because  he  believed  that  the  men  thus  proscribed 
never  would  return. 

But  his  policy  met  with  the  severest  and  most  unmeas- 
ured criticism  at  home.  If  Lord  Durham  had  been  guilty 
of  the  worst  excesses  of  power  which  Burke  charged  against 
Warren  Hastings,  he  could  not  have  been  more  fiercely  de- 
nounced in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  was  accused  of  having 
promulgated  an  ordinance  which  would  enable  him  to  hang 
men  without  any  trial  or  form  of  trial.  None  of  his  oppo- 
nents seemed  to  remember  that  whether  his  disposal  of  the 
prisoners  was  right  or  wrong,  it  was  only  a  small  and  inci- 
dental part  of  a  great  policy  covering  the  readjustment  of 
the  whole  political  and  social  system  of  a  splendid  colony. 
The  criticism  went  on  as  if  the  promulgation  of  the  Quebec 
ordinances  was  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  Lord  Durham's 
mission.  His  opponents  made  great  complaint  about  the 
cost  of  his  progress  in  Canada.  Lord  Durham  had  undoubt- 
edly a  lavish  taste  and  a  love  for  something  like  Oriental 
display.  He  made  his  goings  about  in  Canada  like  a  gor- 
geous royal  progress;  yet  it  was  well  known  that  he  took 
no  remuneration  whatever  for  himself,  and  did  not  even  ac- 


CANADA  AND  LOED  DURHAM.  53 

cept  his  own  personal  travelling  expenses.  He  afterward 
stated  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  the  visit  cost  him  person- 
ally ten  thousand  pounds  at  least.  Mr.  Hume,  the  advocate 
of  economy,  made  sarcastic  comment  on  the  sudden  fit  of 
parsimony  which  seemed  to  have  seized,  in  Lord  Durham's 
case,  men  whom  he  had  never  before  known  to  raise  their 
voices  against  any  prodigality  of  expenditure. 

The  ministry  was  very  weak  in  debating  power  in  the 
House  of  Lords.  Lord  Durham  had  made  enemies  there. 
The  opportunity  was  tempting  for  assailing  him  and  the 
ministry  together.  Many  of  the  criticisms  were  undoubted- 
ly the  conscientious  protests  of  men  who  saw  danger  in  any 
departure  from  the  recognized  principles  of  constitutional 
law.  Eminent  judges  and  lawyers  in  the  House  of  Lords 
naturally  looked,  above  all  things,  to  the  proper  administra- 
tion of  the  law  as  it  existed.  But  it  is  hard  to  doubt  that 
political  or  personal  enmity  influenced  some  of  the  attacks 
on  Lord  Durham's  conduct.  Almost  all  the  leading  men  in 
the  House  of  Lords  were  against  him.  Lord  Brougham 
and  Lord  Lyndhurst  were  for  the  time  leagued  in  opposition 
to  the  Government  and  in  attack  on  the  Canadian  policy. 
Lord  Brougham  claimed  to  be  consistent.  He  had  opposed 
the  Canada  coercion  from  the  beginning,  he  said,  and  he  op- 
posed illegal  attempts  to  deal  with  Canada  now.  It  seems 
a  little  hard  to  understand  how  Lord  Brougham  could  really 
have  so  far  misunderstood  the  purpose  of  Lord  Durham's 
proclamation  as  to  believe  that  he  proposed  to  hang  men 
without  the  form  of  law.  However  Lord  Durham  may  have 
broken  the  technical  rules  of  law,  nothing  could  be  more 
obvious  than  the  fact  that  he  did  so  in  the  interest  of  mer- 
cy and  generosity,  and  not  that  of  tyrannical  severity.  Lord 
Brougham  inveighed  against  him  with  thundering  eloquence, 
Jis  if  he  were  denouncing  another  Sejanus.  It  must  be  own- 
ed that  his  attacks  lost  some  of  their  moral  effect  because 
of  his  known  hatred  to  Lord  Melbourne  and  the  ministry, 
and  even  to  Lord  Durham  himself.  People  said  that 
Brougham  had  a  special  reason  for  feeling  hostile  to  any- 
thing done  by  Lord  Durham.  A  dinner  was  given  to  Lord 
Grey  by  the  Reformers  of  Edinburgh,  in  1834,  at  which  Lord 
Brougham  and  Lord  Durham  were  both  present.  Brough- 
am was  called  upon  to  speak,  and  in  the  course  of  his  speech 


54  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

he  took  occasion  to  condemn  certain  too-zealous  Reformers 
who  could  not  be  content  with  the  changes  that  had  been 
made,  but  must  demand  that  the  ministry  should  rush  for- 
ward into  wild  and  extravagant  enterprises.  He  enlarged 
upon  this  subject  with  great  vivacity  and  with  amusing 
variety  of  humorous  and  rhetorical  illustration.  Lord  Dur- 
ham assumed  that  the  attack  was  intended  for  him.  His 
assumption  was  not  unnatural.  When  he  came  in  his  turn 
to  speak,  he  was  indiscreet  enough  to  reply  directly  to  Lor<i 
Brougham,  to  accept  the  speech  of  the  former  as  a  personal 
challenge,  and  in  bitter  words  to  retort  invective  and  sar- 
casm. The  scene  was  not  edifying.  The  guests  were  scan- 
dalized. The  effect  of  Brougham's  speech  was  wholly  spoil- 
ed. Brougham  was  made  to  seem  a  disturber  of  order  by 
the  indiscretion  which  provoked  into  retort  a  man  notorious- 
ly indiscreet  and  incapable  of  self-restraint.  It  is  not  unfair 
to  the  memory  of  so  fierce  and  unsparing  a  political  gladia- 
tor as  Lord  Brougham,  to  assume  that  when  he  felt  called 
upon  to  attack  the  Canadian  policy  of  Lord  Durham,  the 
recollection  of  the  scene  at  the  Edinburgh  dinner  inspired 
with  additional  force  his  criticism  of  the  Quebec  ordinances. 
The  ministry  were  weak,  and  yielded.  They  had  in  the 
first  instance  approved  of  the  ordinances,  but  they  quickly 
gave  way  and  abandoned  them.  They  avoided  a  direct  at- 
tempt on  the  part  of  Lord  Brougham  to  reverse  the  policy 
of  Lord  Durham  by  announcing  that  they  had  determined 
to  disallow  the  Quebec  ordinances.  Lord  Durham  learned 
for  the  first  time  from  an  American  paper  that  the  Govern- 
ment had  abandoned  him.  He  at  once  announced  his  deter- 
mination to  give  up  his  position  and  to  return  to  England. 
His  letter  announcing  this  resolve  crossed  on  the  ocean  the 
despatch  from  home  disallowing  his  ordinances.  With  char- 
acteristic imprudence,  he  issued  a  proclamation  from  the 
Castle  of  St.  Lewis,  in  the  city  of  Quebec,  which  was  virtual- 
ly an  appeal  to  the  public  feeling  of  the  colony  against  the 
conduct  of  her  Majesty's  Government.  When  the  news  of 
this  extraordinary  proclamation  reached  home,  Lord  Durham 
was  called  by  the  Times  newspaper  "the  Lord  High  Sedi- 
tioner."  The  representative  of  the  sovereign,  it  was  said, 
had  appealed  to  the  judgment  of  a  still  rebellious  colony 
against  the  policy  of  the  sovereign's  own  advisers.  Of 


CANADA  AND  LORD  DURHAM.  55 

course  Lord  Durham's  recall  was  unavoidable.  The  Govern- 
ment at  once  sent  out  a  despatch  removing  him  from  his 
place  as  Governor  of  British  North  America. 

Lord  Durham  had  not  waited  for  the  formal  recall.     He 
returned  to  England  a  disgraced  man.     Yet  even  then  there 

o  o 

was  public  spirit  enough  among  the  English  people  to  refuse 
to  ratify  any  sentence  of  disgrace  upon  him.  When  he 
landed  at  Plymouth  he  was  received  with  acclamations  by 
the  population,  although  the  Government  had  prevented 
any  of  the  official  honor  usually  shown  to  returning  govern- 
ors from  being  offered  to  him.  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill  has 
claimed  with  modest  firmness  and  with  perfect  justice  a  lead- 
ing share  in  influencing  public  opinion  in  favor  of  Lord  Dur- 
ham. "Lord  Durham,"  he  says  in  Ins  autobiography,  "  was 
bitterly  attacked  from  all  sides,  inveighed  against  by  ene- 
mies, given  up  by  timid  friends;  while  those  who  would 
willingly  have  defended  him  did  not  know  what  to  say.  He 
appeared  to  be  returning  a  defeated  and  discredited  man. 
I  had  followed  the  Canadian  events  from  the  beginning;  I 
had  been  one  of  the  prompters  of  his  prompters;  his  policy 
was  almost  exactly  what  mine  would  have  been,  and  I  was 
in  a  position  to  defend  it.  I  wrote  and  published  a  mani- 
festo in  the  [Westminster]  ^Review,  in  which  I  took  the  very 
highest  ground  in  his  behalf,  claiming  for  him  not  mere  ac- 
quittal, but  praise  and  honor.  Instantly  a  number  of  other 
writers  took  up  the  tone.  I  believe  there  was  a  portion  of 
truth  in  what  Lord  Durham  soon  after,  with  polite  exaggera- 
tion, said  to  me,  that  to  this  article  might  be  ascribed  the 
almost  triumphal  reception  which  he  met  with  on  his  arrival 
in  England.  I  believe  it  to  have  been  the  word  in  season, 
which  at  a  critical  moment  does  much  to  decide  the  result ; 
the  touch  which  determines  whether  a  stone  set  in  motion 
at  the  top  of  an  eminence  shall  roll  down  on  one  side  or  on 
the  other.  All  hopes  connected  with  Lord  Durham  as  a  po- 
litician soon  vanished;  but  with  regard  to  Canadian  and 
generally  to  colonial  policy  the  cause  was  gained.  Lord 
Durham's  report,  written  by  Charles  Buller,  partly  under  the 
inspiration  of  Wakefield,  began  a  new  era;  its  recommenda- 
tions, extending  to  complete  internal  self-government,  were 
in  full  operation  in  Canada  Avithin  two  or  three  years,  and 
have  been  since  extended  to  nearly  all  the  other  colonies  of 


56  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

European  race  which  have  any  claim  to  the  character  of 
important  communities."  In  this  instance  the  victu  causa 
pleased  not  only  Cato,  but,  in  the  end,  the  gods  as  well. 

Lord  Durham's  report  was  acknowledged  by  enemies  as 
well  as  by  the  most  impartial  critics  to  be  a  masterly  docu- 
ment. As  Mr.  Mill  has  said,  it  laid  the  foundation  of  the 
political  success  and  social  prosperity  not  only  of  Canada 
but  of  all  the  other  important  colonies.  After  having  ex- 
plained in  the  most  exhaustive  manner  the  causes  of  discon- 
tent and  backwardness  in  Canada,  it  went  on  to  recommend 
that  the  government  of  the  colony  should  be  put  as  much  as 
possible  into  the  hands  of  the  colonists  themselves,  that  they 
themselves  should  execute  as  well  as  make  the  laws,  the  limit 
of  the  Imperial  Government's  interference  being  in  such 
matters  as  atfect  the  relations  of  the  colony  with  the  moth- 
er-country, such  as  the  constitution  and  form  of  government, 
the  regulation  of  foreign  relations  and  trade,  and  the  dis- 
posal of  the  public  lands.  Lord  Durham  proposed  to  estab- 
lish a  thoroughly  good  system  of  municipal  institutions  ;  to 
secure  the  independence  of  the  judges;  to  make  all  provin- 
cial officers,  except  the  governor  and  his  secretary,  responsi- 
ble to  the  colonial  legislature  ;  and  to  repeal  all  former  leg- 
islation with  respect  to  the  reserves  of  land  for  the  clergy. 
Finally,  he  proposed  that  the  provinces  of  Canada  should  be 
reunited  politically  and  should  become  one  legislature,  con- 
taining the  representatives  of  both  races  and  of  all  districts. 
It  is  significant  that  the  report  also  recommended  that  in 
any  act  to  be  introduced  for  this  purpose,  a  provision  should 
be  made  by  which  all  or  any  of  the  other  North  American 
colonies  should,  on  the  application  of  their  legislatures  and 
with  the  consent  of  Canada,  be  admitted  into  the  Canadian 
Union.  Thus  the  separation  which  Fox  thought  unwise 
was  to  be  abolished,  and  the  Canadas  were  to  be  fused  into 
one  system,  which  Lord  Durham  would  have  had  a  federa- 
tion. In  brief,  Lord  Durham  proposed  to  make  the  Canadas 
self-governing  as  regards  their  internal  affairs,  and  the  germ 
of  a  federal  union.  It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  in  detail 
the  steps  by  which  the  Government  gradually  introduced 
the  recommendations  of  Lord  Durham  to  Parliament  and 
carried  them  to  success.  Lord  Glenelg,  one  of  the  feeblest 
and  most  apathetic  of  colonial  secretaries,  had  retired  from 


CANADA  AND  LOED  DUEHAM.  57 

office,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  of  the  attacks  in  Parliament 
on  his  administration  of  Canadian  affairs.  He  was  succeed- 
ed at  the  Colonial  Office  by  Lord  Normanby,  and  Lord  Nor- 
rnanby  gave  way  in  a  few  months  to  Lord  John  Russell,  who 
was  full  of  energy  and  earnestness.  Lord  Durham's  succes- 
sor and  disciple  in  the  work  of  Canadian  government,  Lord 
Sydenham —  best  known  as  Mr.  Charles  Poulett  Thomson, 
one  of  the  pioneers  of  free-trade — received  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell's cordial  co-operation  and  support.  Lord  John  Russell 
introduced  into  the  House  of  Commons  a  bill  which  he  de- 
scribed as  intended  to  lay  the  foundation  of  a  permanent 
settlement  of  the  affairs  of  Canada.  The  measure  was  post- 
poned for  a  session  because  some  statesmen  thought  that 
it  would  not  be  acceptable  to  the  Canadians  themselves. 
Some  little  sputterings  of  the  rebellion  had  also  lingered  af- 
ter Lord  Durham's  return  to  this  country,  and  these  for  a 
short  time  had  directed  attention  away  from  the  policy  of 
reorganization.  In  1840,  however, the  Act  was  passed  which 
reunited  Upper  and  Lower  Canada  on  the  basis  proposed 
by  Lord  Durham.  Further  legislation  disposed  of  the  cler- 
gy reserve  lands  for  the  general  benefit  of  all  churches  and 
denominations.  The  way  was  made  clear  for  that  scheme 
which  in  times  nearer  to  our  own  has  formed  the  Dominion 
of  Canada. 

Lord  Durham  did  not  live  to  see  the  success  of  the  policy 
he  had  recommended.  We  may  anticipate  the  close  of  his 
career.  Within  a  few  days  after  the  passing  of  the  Canada 
Government  Bill  he  died  at  Cowes,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  on 
July  28th,  1840.  He  was  then  little  more  than  forty-eight 
years  of  age.  He  had  for  some  time  been  in  failing  health, 
and  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  mortification  attending 
his  Canadian  mission  had  worn  away  his  strength.  His 
proud  and  sensitive  spirit  could  ill  bear  the  contradictions 
and  humiliations  that  had  been  forced  upon  him.  His  was 
an  eager  and  a  passionate  nature,  full  of  that  sceva  indigna- 
tio  which,  by  his  own  acknowledgment,  tortured  the  heart 
of  Swift.  He  wanted  to  the  success  of  his  political  career 
that  proud  patience  which  the  gods  are  said  to  love,  and  by 
virtue  of  which  great  men  live  down  misappreciation,  and 
hold  out  until  they  see  themselves  justified  and  hear  the  re- 
proaches turn  into  cheers.  But  if  Lord  Durham's  personal 

3* 


58  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

career  was  in  any  way  a  failure,  bis  policy  for  the  Canadas 
was  a  splendid  success.  It  established  the  principles  of  co- 
lonial government.  There  were  undoubtedly  defects  in  the 
construction  of  the  actual  scheme  which  Lord  Durham  ini- 
tiated, and  which  Lord  Sydenham,  who  died  not  long  after 
him,  instituted.  The  legislative  union  of  the  two  Canadas 
was  in  itself  a  makeshift,  and  was  only  adopted  as  such. 
Lord  Durham  would  have  had  it  otherwise  if  he  might;  but 
he  did  not  see  his  way  then  to  anything  like  the  complete 
federation  scheme  afterward  adopted.  But  the  success  of 
the  policy  lay  in  the  broad  principles  it  established,  and  to 
which  other  colonial  systems  as  well  as  that  of  the  Domin- 
ion of  Canada  owe  their  strength  and  security  to-day.  One 
may  say,  with  little  help  from  the  merely  fanciful,  that  the 
rejoicings  of  emancipated  colonies  might  have  been  in  his 
dying  ears  as  he  sank  into  his  early  grave. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SCIENCE    AND    SPEED. 

THE  opening  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  coincided 
with  the  introduction  of  many  of  the  great  discoveries  and 
applications  in  science,  industry,  and  commerce  which  we 
consider  specially  representative  of  modern  civilization.  A 
reign  which  saw  in  its  earlier  years  the  application  of  the 
electric  current  to  the  task  of  transmitting  messages,  the 
first  successful  attempts  to  make  use  of  steam  for  the  busi- 
ness of  transatlantic  navigation,  the  general  development  of 
the  railway  system  all  over  these  countries,  and  in  the  in- 
troduction of  the  penny -post,  must  be  considered  to  have 
obtained  for  itself,  had  it  secured  no  other  memorials,  an  abid- 
ing place  in  history.  A  distinguished  author  has  lately  in- 
veighed against  the  spirit  which  would  rank  such  improve- 
ments as  those  just  mentioned  with  the  genuine  triumphs 
of  the  human  race,  and  has  gone  so  far  as  to  insist  that  there 
is  nothing  in  any  such  which  might  not  be  expected  from 
the  self-interested  contrivings  of  a  very  inferior  animal  nat- 
ure. Amidst  the  tendency  to  glorify  beyond  measure  the 
mere  mechanical  improvements  of  modern  civilization,  it  is 


SCIENCE  AND  SPEED.  59 

natural  that  there  should  arise  some  angry  questioning,  some 
fierce  disparagement  of  all  that  it  has  done.  There  will  al- 
ways be  natures  to  which  the  philosophy  of  contemplation 
must  seem  far  nobler  than  the  philosophy  which  expresses 
itself  in  mechanical  action.  It  may,  however,  be  taken  as 
certain  that  no  people  who  were  ever  great  in  thought  and 
in  art  wilfully  neglected  to  avail  themselves  of  all  possible 
contrivances  for  making  life  less  laborious  by  the  means  of 
mechanical  and  artificial  contrivance.  The  Greeks  were,  to 
the  best  of  their  opportunity,  and  when  at  the  highest  point 
of  their  glory  as  an  artistic  rdfce,  as  eager  for  the  application 
of  all  scientific  and  mechanical  contrivances  to  the  business 
of  life  as  the  most  practical  and  boastful  Manchester  man  or 
Chicago  man  of  our  own  day.  We  shall  afterward  see  that 
the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  came  to  have  a  literature,  an 
art,  and  a  philosophy  distinctly  its  own.  For  the  moment 
we  have  to  do  with  its  industrial  science;  or,  at  least,  with 
the  first  remarkable  movements  in  that  direction  which  ac- 
companied the  opening  of  the  reign.  This  at  least  must  be 
said  for  them,  that  they  have  changed  the  conditions  of  hu- 
man life  for  us  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make  the  history  of 
the  past  forty  or  fifty  years  almost  absolutely  distinct  from 
that  of  any  preceding  period.  In  all  that  part  of  our  social 
life  which  is  affected  by  industrial  and  mechanical  appli- 
ances, the  man  of  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  less  widely  removed  from  the  Englishman  of  the  days 
of  the  Fasten  Letters  than  we  are  removed  from  the  ways 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  man  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury travelled  on  land  and  sea  in  much  the  same  way  that 
his  forefathers  had  done  hundreds  of  years  before.  His 
communications  by  letter  with  his  fellows  were  carried  on 
in  very  much  the  same  method.  He  got  his  news  from 
abroad  and  at  home  after  the  same  slow,  uncertain  fashion. 
His  streets  and  houses  were  lighted  very  much  as  they 
might  have  been  when  Mr.  Pepys  was  in  London.  His 
ideas  of  drainage  and  ventilation  were  equally  elementary 
and  simple.  We  see  a  complete  revolution  in  'all  these 
things.  A  man  of  the  present  day  suddenly  thrust  back 
fifty  years  in  life  Avould  find  himself  almost  as  awkwardly 
unsuited  to  the  ways  of  that  time  as  if  he  were  sent  back 
to  the  age  when  the  Romans  occupied  Britain.  He  would 


60  A    HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

find  himself  harassed  at  every  step  he  took.  He  could  do 
hardly  anything  as  he  does  it  to-day.  Whatever  the  moral 
and  philosophical  value  of  the  change  in  the  eyes  of  think- 
ers too  lofty  to  concern  themselves  with  the  common  ways 
and  doings  of  human  life,  this  is  certain  at  least,  that  the 
change  is  of  immense  historical  importance  ;  and  that  even 
if  we  look  upon  life  as  a  mere  pageant  and  show,  interesting 
to  wise  men  only  by  its  curious  changes,  a  wise  man  of  this 
school  could  hardly  have  done  better,  if  the  choice  lay  with 
him,  than  to  desire  that  the  lines  of  his  life  might  be  so  cast 
as  to  fall  into  the  earlier  part^>f  this  present  reign. 

It  is  a  somewhat  curious  coincidence  that  in  the  year 
when  Professor  Wheatstone  and  Mr.  Cooke  took  out  their 
first  patent  "for  improvements  in  giving  signals  aiid  sound- 
ing alarms  in  distant  places  by  means  of  electric  currents 
transmitted  through  metallic  circuit,"  Professor  Morse,  the 
American  electrician,  applied  to  Congress  for  aid  in  the  con- 
struction and  carrying  on  of  a  small  electric  telegraph  to 
convey  messages  a  short  distance,  and  made  the  application 
without  success.  In  the  following  year  he  came  to  this 
country  to  obtain  a  patent  for  his  invention ;  but  he  was 
refused.  He  had  come  too  late.  Our  own  countrymen  were 
beforehand  with  him.  Very  soon  after  we  find  experiments 
made  with  the  electric  telegraph  between  Euston  Square 
and  Camden  Town.  These  experiments  were  made  under 
the  authority  of  the  London  and  North-western  Railway 
Company,  immediately  on  the  taking  out  of  the  patent  by 
Messrs.  Wheatstone  and  Cooke.  Mr.  Robert  Stephenson 
was  one  of  those  who  came  to  watch  the  operation  of  this 
new  and  wonderful  attempt  to  make  the  currents  of  the  air 
man's  faithful  Ariel.  The  London  and  Birmingham  Rail- 
way was  opened  through  its  whole  length  in  1838.  The 
Liverpool  and  Preston  line  was  opened  in  the  same  year. 
The  Liverpool  and  Birmingham  had  been  opened  in  the  year 
before ;  the  London  and  Croydon  was  opened  the  year  after. 
The  Act  for  the  transmission  of  the  mails  by  railways  was 
passed  in  1838.  In  the  same  year  it  was  noted  as  an  unpar- 
alleled, and  to  many  an  almost  incredible,  triumph  of  hu- 
man energy  and  science  over  time  and  space,  that  a  loco- 
motive had  been  able  to  travel  at  a  speed  of  thirty-seven 
miles  an  hour. 


SCIENCE   AND  SPEED.  61 

"  The  prospect  of  travelling  from  the  metropolis  to  Liver- 
pool, a  distance  of  two  hundred  and  ten  miles,  in  ten  hours, 
calls  forcibly  to  mind  the  tales  of  fairies  and  genii  by  which 
we  were  amused  in  our  youth,  and  contrasts  forcibly  with 
the  fact,  attested  on  the  personal  experience  of  the  writer 
of  this  notice,  that  about  the  commencement  of  the  pres- 
ent century  this  same  journey  occupied  a  space  of  sixty 
hours."  These  are  the  words  of  a  writer  who  gives  an  in- 
teresting account  of  the  railways  of  England  during  the 
first  year  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  In  the  same  vol- 
ume from  which  this  extract  is  taken  an  allusion  is  made  to 
the  possibility  of  steam  communication  being  successfully 
established  between  England  and  the  United  States.  "Prep- 
arations on  a  gigantic  scale,"  a  writer  is  able  to  announce, 
"are  now  in  a  state  of  great  forwardness  for  trying  an  ex- 
periment in  steam  navigation  which  has  been  the  subject 
of  much  controversy  among  scientific  men.  Ships  of  an 
enormous  size,  furnished  with  steam-power  equal  to  the 
force  of  four  hundred  horses  and  upward,  will,  before  our 
next  volume  shall  be  prepared,  have  probably  decided  the 
question  whether  this  description  of  vessels  can,  in  the  pres- 
ent state  of  our  knowledge,  profitably  engage  in  transat- 
lantic voyages.  It  is  possible  that  these  attempts  may  fail — 
a  result  which  is,  indeed,  predicted  by  high  authorities  on 
this  subject.  We  are  more  sanguine  in  our  hopes;  but 
should  these  be  disappointed,  we  cannot,  if  we  are  to  judge 
from  our  past  progress,  doubt  that  longer  experience  and 
a  further  application  of  inventive  genius  will,  at  no  very 
distant  day,  render  practicable  and  profitable  by  this  means 
the  longest  voyages  in  which  the  adventurous  spirit  of  man 
will  lead  him  to  embark."  The  experiment  thus  alluded  to 
was  made  with  perfect  success.  The  Sirius,  the  Great  West- 
ern, and  the  .Royal  William  accomplished  voyages  between 
New  York  and  this  country  in  the  early  part  of  1838;  and 
it  was  remarked  that  "Transatlantic  voyages  by  means  of 
steam  may  now  be  said  to  be  as  easy  of  accomplishment, 
with  ships  of  adequate  size  and  power,  as  the  passage  be- 
tween London  and  Margate."  The  Great  Western  crossed 
the  ocean  from  Bristol  to  New  York  in  fifteen  days.  She 
was  followed  by  the  Sirius^  which  left  Cork  for  New  York, 
and  made  the  passage  in  seventeen  days.  The  controversy 


62  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

as  to  the  possibility  of  such  voyages,  which  was  settled  by 
the  Great  Western  and  the  Sinus,  had  no  reference  to  the 
actual  safety  of  such  an  experiment.  During  seven  years 
the  mails  for  the  Mediterranean  had  been  despatched  by 
means  of  steamers.  The  doubt  was  as  to  the  possibility 
of  stowing  in  a  vessel  so  large  a  quantity  of  coal  or  other 
fuel  as  would  enable  her  to  accomplish  her  voyage  across 
the  Atlantic,  where  there  could  be  no  stopping-place  and  no 
possibility  of  taking  in  new  stores.  It  was  found,  to  the 
delight  of  all  those  who  believed  in  the  practicability  of  the 
enterprise,  that  the  quantity  of  fuel  which  each  vessel  hud 
on  board  when  she  left  her  port  of  departure  proved  amply 
sufficient  for  the  completion  of  the  voyage.  Neither  the 
Sirius  nor  the  Great  Western  was  the  first  vessel  to  cross 
the  Atlantic  by  means  of  steam  propulsion.  Nearly  twenty 
years  before,  a  vessel  called  the  Savannah,  built  at  New 
York,  crossed  the  ocean  to  Liverpool ;  and  some  years  later 
an  English -built  steamer  made  several  voyages  between 
Holland  and  the  Dutch  West  Indian  colonies  as  a  packet 
vessel  in  the  service  of  that  Government.  Indeed,  a  voyage 
had  been  made  round  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  more  lately 
still  by  a  steamship.  These  expeditions,  however,  had  real- 
ly little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  problem  which  was  solved 
by  the  voyages  of  the  Sirius  and  the  Great  Western.  In  the 
former  instances  the  steam-power  was  employed  merely  as 
an  auxiliary.  The  vessel  made  as  much  use  of  her  steam 
propulsion  as  she  could,  but  she  had  to  rely  a  good  deal  on 
her  capacity  as  a  sailer.  This  was  quite  a  different  thing 
from  the  enterprise  of  the  Sirius  and  the  Great  Western, 
which  was  to  cross  the  ocean  by  steam  propulsion,  and 
steam  propulsion  only.  It  is  evident  that,  so  long  as  the 
steam-power  was  to  be  used  only  as  an  auxiliary,  it  would 
be  impossible  to  reckon  on  speed  and  certainty  of  arrival. 
The  doubt  was  whether  a  steamer  could  carry,  with  her 
cargo  and  passengers,  fuel  enough  to  serve  for  the  whole 
of  her  voyage  across  the  Atlantic.  The  expeditions  of  the 
Sirius  and  the  Great  Western  settled  the  whole  question. 
It  was  never  again  a  matter  of  controversy.  It  is  enough 
to  say  that  two  years  after  the  Great  Western  went  out 
from  Bristol  to  New  York  the  Cunard  line  of  steamers  was 
established.  The  steam  communication  between  Liverpool 


SCIENCE  AND   SPEED.  63 

and  New  York  became  thenceforth  as  regular  and  as  unva- 
rying a  part  of  the  business  of  commerce  as  the  journeys  of 
the  trains  on  the  Great  Western  Railway  between  London 
and  Bristol.  It  was  not  Bristol  which  benefited  most  by 
the  transatlantic  voyages.  They  made  the  greatness  of 
Liverpool.  Year  by  year  the  sceptre  of  the  commercial 
marine  passed  away  from  Bristol  to  Liverpool.  No  port  in 
the  world  can  show  a  line  of  docks  like  those  of  Liverpool. 
There  the  stately  Mersey  flows  for  miles  between  the  superb 
and  massive  granite  walls  of  the  enclosures  within  whose 
shelter  the  ships  of  the  world  are  arrayed,  as  if  on  parade, 
for  the  admiration  of  the  traveller  who  has  hitherto  been 
accustomed  to  the  irregular  and  straggling  arrangements  of 
the  docks  of  London  or  of  New  York. 

On  July  5th,  1839,  an  unusually  late  period  of  the  year, 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  brought  forward  his  annual 
budget.  The  most  important  part  of  the  financial  statement, 
so  far  as  later  times  are  concerned,  is  set  out  in  a  resolution 
proposed  by  the  finance  minister,  which,  perhaps,  represents 
the  greatest  social  improvement  brought  about  by  legisla- 
tion in  modern  times.  The  Chancellor  proposed  a  resolution 
declaring  that  "it  is  expedient  to  reduce  the  postage  on  let- 
ters to  one  uniform  rate  of  one  penny  charged  upon  every 
letter  of  a  weight  to  be  hereafter  fixed  by  law ;  Parliamenta- 
ry privileges  of  franking  being  abolished  and  official  frank- 
ing strictly  regulated  ;  this  House  pledging  itself  at  the 
same  time  to  make  good  any  deficiency  of  revenue  which  may 
be  occasioned  by  such  an  alteration  in  the  rates  of  the  ex- 
isting duties."  Up  to  this  time  the  rates  of  postage  had 
been  both  high  and  various.  They  were  varying  both  as  to 
distance  and  as  to  the  weight  and  even  the  size  or  the  shape 
of  a  letter.  The  district  or  London  post  was  a  separate 
branch  of  the  postal  department ;  and  the  charge  for  the 
transmission  of  letters  was  made  on  a  different  scale  in  Lon- 
don from  that  which  prevailed  between  town  and  town. 
The  average  postage  on  every  chargeable  letter  through- 
out the  United  Kingdom  was  sixpence  farthing.  A  letter 
from  London  to  Brighton  cost  eightpence;  to  Aberdeen  one 
shilling  and  threepence  half-penny;  to  Belfast  one  shilling 
and  fourpence.  Nor  was  this  all ;  for  if  the  letter  were  writ- 
ten on  more  than  one  sheet  of  paper,  it  came  under  the  oper- 


64:  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

atiou  of  a  higher  scale  of  charge.  Members  of  Parliament 
had  the  privilege  of  franking  letters  to  a  certain  limited  ex- 
tent ;  members  of  the  Government  had  the  privilege  of 
franking  to  an  unlimited  extent.  It  is,  perhaps,  as  well  to 
mention,  for  the  sake  of  being  intelligible  to  all  readers  in  an 

7  O  ~ 

age  which  has  not,  in  this  country  at  least,  known  practical- 
ly the  beauty  and  liberality  of  the  franking  privilege,  that  it 
consisted  in  the  right  of  the  privileged  person  to  send  his 
own  or  any  other  person's  letters  through  the  post  free  of 
charge  by  merely  writing  his  name  on  the  outside.  This 
meant,  in  plain  words,  that  the  letters  of  the  class  who  could 
best  afford  to  pay  for  them  went  free  of  charge,  and  that 
those  who  could  least  afford  to  pay  had  to  pay  double — 
the  expense,  that  is  to  say,  of  carrying  their  own  letters  and 
the  letters  of  the  privileged  and  exempt. 

The  greatest  grievances  were  felt  everywhere  because  of 
this  absurd  system.  It  had  along  with  its  other  disadvan- 
tages that  of  encouraging  what  may  be  called  the  smug- 
gling of  letters.  Everywhere  sprang  up  organizations  for 
the  illicit  conveyance  of  correspondence  at  lower  rates  than 
those  imposed  by  the  Government.  The  proprietors  of  al- 
most every  kind  of  public  conveyance  are  said  to  have  been 
engaged  in  this  unlawful  but  certainly  not  very  unnatural 
or  unjustifiable  traffic.  Five-sixths  of  all  the  letters  sent 
between  Manchester  and  London  were  said  to  have  been 
conveyed  for  years  by  this  process.  One  great  mercantile 
house  was  proved  to  have  been  in  the  habit  of  sending  sixty- 
seven  letters  by  what  we  may  call  this  undergound  post- 
office  for  every  one  on  which  they  paid  the  Government 
charges.  It  was  not  merely  to  escape  heavy  cost  that  these 
stratagems  were  employed.  As  there  was  an  additional 
charge  when  a  letter  was  written  on  more  sheets  than  one, 
there  was  a  frequent  and  almost  a  constant  tampering  by 
officials  with  the  sanctity  of  sealed  letters  for  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  whether  or  not  they  ought  to  be  taxed  on 
the  higher  scale.  It  was  proved  that  in  the  years  between 
1815  and  1835,  while  the  population  had  increased  thirty  per 
cent.,  and  the  stage-coach  duty  had  increased  one  hundred 
and  twenty-eight  per  cent.,  the  Post-office  revenues  had 
shown  no  increase  at  all.  In  other  countries  the  postal  rev- 
enue had  been  on  the  increase  steadily  during  that  time; 


SCIENCE  AND  SPEED.  65 

in  the  United  States  the  revenue  had  actually  trebled,  al- 
though then  and  later  the  postal  system  of  America  was  full 
of  faults  which  at  that  day  only  seemed  intelligible  or  ex- 
cusable when  placed  in  comparison  with  those  of  our  own 
system. 

Mr.  (afterward  Sir  Rowland)  Hill  is  the  man  to  whom  this 
country,  and,  indeed,  all  civilization,  owes  the  adoption  of  the 
cheap  and  uniform  system.  His  plan  has  been  adopted  by 
every  State  which  professes  to  have  a  postal  system  at  all. 
Mr.  Hill  belonged  to  a  remarkable  family.  His  father, 
Thomas  Wright  Hill,  was  a  teacher,  a  man  of  advanced  and 
practical  views  in  popular  education,  a  devoted  lover  of  sci- 
ence, an  advocate  of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  and  a  sort 
of  celebrity  in  the  Birmingham  of  his  day,  where  he  took 
a  bold  and  active  part  in  trying  to  defend  the  house  of  Dr. 
Priestley  against  the  mob  who  attacked  it.  He  had  five 
sons,  every  one  of  whom  made  himself  more  or  less  conspic- 
uous as  a  practical  reformer  in  one  path  or  another.  The 
eldest  of  the  sons  was  Matthew  Davenport  Hill,  the  philan- 
thropic recorder  of  Birmingham,  who  did  so  much  for  prison 
reform  and  for  the  reclamation  of  juvenile  offenders.  The 
third  son  was  Rowland  Hill,  the  author  of  the  cheap  postal 
system.  Rowland  Hill  when  a  little  weakly  child  began  to 
show  some  such  precocious  love  for  arithmetical  calculations 
as  Pascal  showed  for  mathematics.  His  favorite  amusement, 
as  a  child,  was  to  lie  on  the  hearth-rug  and  count  up  figures 
by  the  hour  together.  As  he  grew  up  he  became  teacher 
of  mathematics  in  his  father's  school.  Afterward  he  was 
appointed  Secretary  to  the  South  Australian  Commission, 
and  rendered  much  valuable  service  in  the  organization  of 
the  colony  of  South  Australia.  His  early  love  of  masses  of 
figures  it  may  have  been  which  in  the  first  instance  turned 
his  attention  to  the  number  of  letters  passing  through  the 
Post-office,  the  proportion  they  bore  to  the  number  of  the 
population,  the  cost  of  carrying  them,  and  the  amount  which 
the  Post-office  authorities  charged  for  the  conveyance  of  a 
single  letter.  A  picturesque  and  touching  little  illustration 
of  the  veritable  hardships  of  the  existing  system  seems  to 
have  quickened  his  interest  in  a  reform  of  it.  Miss  Marti- 
neau  thus  tells  the  story : 

"  Coleridge,  when  a  young  man,  was  walking  through  the 


66  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Lake  district,  when  he  one  day  saw  the  postman  deliver  a 
letter  to  a  woman  at  a  cottage  door.  The  woman  turned  it 
over  and  examined  it,  and  then  returned  it,  saying  she  could 
not  pay  the  postage,  which  was  a  shilling.  Hearing  that 
the  letter  was  from  her  brother,  Coleridge  paid  the  postage, 
in  spite  of  the  manifest  unwillingness  of  the  woman.  As 
soon  as  the  postman  was  out  of  sight  she  showed  Coleridge 
how  his  money  had  been  wasted  as  far  as  she  was  concerned. 
The  sheet  was  blank.  There  was  an  agreement  between  her 
brother  and  herself  that  as  long  as  all  went  well  with  him 
he  should  send  a  blank  sheet  in  this  way  once  a  quarter; 
and  she  thus  had  tidings  of  him  without  expense  of  postage. 
Most  persons  would  have  remembered  this  incident  as  a 
curious  story  to  tell ;  but  there  was  one  mind  which  waken- 
ed up  at  once  to  a  sense  of  the  significance  of  the  fact.  It 
struck  Mr.  Rowland  Hill  that  there  must  be  something 
wrong  in  a  system  which  drove  a  brother  and  sister  to 
cheating,  in  order  to  gratify  their  desire  to  hear  of  one  an- 
other's welfare." 

Mr.  Hill  gradually  worked  out  for  himself  a  comprehensive 
scheme  of  reform.  He  put  it  before  the  world  early  in  1837. 
The  public  were  taken  by  surprise  when  the  plan  came  be- 
fore them  in  the  shape  of  a  pamphlet,  which  its  author  mod- 
estly entitled  "Post-office  Reform;  its  importance  and  prac- 
ticability." The  root  of  Mr.  Hill's  system  lay  in  the  fact, 
made  evident  by  him  beyond  dispute,  that  the  actual  cost 
of  the  conveyance  of  letters  through  the  post  was  very  tri- 
fling, and  was  but  little  increased  by  the  distance  over  which 
they  had  to  be  carried. 

His  proposal  was,  therefore,  that  the  rates  of  postage  should 
be  diminished  to  the  minimum ;  that  at  the  same  time  the 
speed  of  conveyance  should  be  increased,  and  that  there 
should  be  much  greater  frequency  of  despatch.  His  princi- 
ple was,  in  fact,  the  very  opposite  of  that  which  had  prevail- 
ed in  the  calculations  of  the  authorities.  Their  idea  was 
that  the  higher  the  charge  for  letters  the  greater  the  return 
to  the  revenue.  He  started  on  the  assumption  that  the 
smaller  the  charge  the  greater  the  profit.  He,  therefore, 
recommended  the  substitution  of  one  uniform  charge  of  one 
penny  the  half-ounce,  without  reference  to  the  distance  with- 
in the  limits  of  the  United  Kingdom  which  the  letter  had  to 


SCIENCE  AND  SPEED.  67 

be  carried.  The  Post-office  authorities  were  at  first  uncom- 
promising in  their  opposition  to  the  scheme.  The  Post- 
master-general, Lord  Lichfield,  said  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
that  of  all  the  wild  and  extravagant  schemes  he  had  ever 
heai'd  of,  it  was  the  wildest  and  most  extravagant.  "The 
mails,"  he  said,  "will  have  to  carry  twelve  times  as  much 
weight,  and  therefore  the  charge  for  transmission,  instead  of 
£100,000,  as  now,  must  be  twelve  times  that  amount.  The 
walls  of  the  Post-office  would  burst;  the  whole  area  in 
which  the  building  stands  would  not  be  large  enough  to  re- 

«~  O  C5 

ceive  the  clerks  and  the  letters."  It  is  impossible  not  to  be 
struck  by  the  paradoxical  peculiarity  of  this  argument.  Be- 
cause the  change  would  be  so  much  welcomed  by  the  public, 
Lord  Lichfield  argued  that  it  ought  not  to  be  made.  He 
did  not  fall  back  upon  the  then  familiar  assertion  that  the 
public  would  not  send  anything  like  the  number  of  letters 
the  advocates  of  the  scheme  expected.  He  argued  that  they 
would  send  so  many  as  to  make  it  troublesome  for  the  Post- 
office  authorities  to  deal  with  them.  In  plain  words,  it 
would  be  such  an  immense  accommodation  to  the  population 
in  general  that  the  officials  could  not  undertake  the  trouble 
of  carrying  it  into  effect.  Another  Post-office  official,  Colonel 
Maberley,  was,  at  all  events,  more  liberal.  "My  constant 
language,"  he  said  afterward,  "  to  the  heads  of  the  depart- 
ments was — This  plan  we  know  will  fail.  It  is  our  duty  to 
take  care  that  no  obstruction  is  placed  in  the  way  of  it  by 
the  heads  of  the  departments,  and  by  the  Post-office.  The 
allegation,  I  have  not  the  least  doubt,  will  be  made  at  a  sub- 
sequent period,  that  this  plan  has  failed  in  consequence  of 
the  unwillingness  of  the  Government  to  carry  it  into  fail- 
execution.  It  is  our  duty,  as  servants  of  the  Government, 
to  take  care  that  no  blame  eventually  shall  fall  on  the  Gov- 
ernment through  any  unwillingness  of  ours  to  carry  it  into 
proper  effect."  It  is,  perhaps,  less  surprising  that  the  routine 
mind  of  officials  should  have  seen  no  future  but  failure  for 
the  scheme,  when  so  vigorous  and  untrammelled  a  thinker 
as  Sydney  Smith  spoke  with  anger  and  contempt  of  the  fact 
that  "  a  million  of  revenue  is  given  up  in  the  nonsensical 
Penny-post  scheme,  to  please  my  old,  excellent,  and  univer- 
sally dissentient  friend,  Noah  Warburton."  Mr.  Warburton 
was  then  member  for  Bridport,  and,  with  Mr. Wallace,  anoth- 


68  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

er  member  of  Parliament,  was  very  active  in  supporting  and 
promoting  the  views  of  Mr.  Hill.  "  I  admire  the  Whig  Min- 
istry," Sydney  Smith  went  on  to  say,  "  and  think  they  have 
done  more  good  things  than  all  the  ministries  since  the  Rev- 
olution ;  but  these  concessions  are  sad  and  unworthy  marks 
of  weakness,  and  fill  reasonable  men  with  alarm." 

It  will  be  seen  from  this  remark  alone  that  the  ministry 
had  yielded  somewhat  more  readily  than  might  have  been 
expected  to  the  arguments  of  Mr.  Hill.  At  the  time  his 
pamphlet  appeared  a  commission  was  actually  engaged  in 
inquiring  into  the  condition  of  the  Post-office  department. 
Their  attention  was  drawn  to  Mr.  Hill's  plan,  and  they  gave 
it  a  careful  consideration,  and  reported  in  its  favor,  although 
the  Post-office  authorities  were  convinced  that  it  must  in- 
volve an  unbearable  loss  of  revenue.  In  Parliament  Mr. 
Wallace,  whose  name  has  been  already  mentioned,  moved 
for  a  committee  to  inquire  into  the  whole  subject,  and  es- 
pecially to  examine  the  mode  recommended  for  charging 
and  collecting  postage  in  the  pamphlet  of  Mr.  Hill.  The 
committee  gave  the  subject  a  very  patient  consideration, 
and  at  length  made  a  report  recommending  uniform  charges 
and  prepayment  by  stamps.  That  part  of  Mr.  Hill's  plan 
which  suggested  the  use  of  postage-stamps  was  adopted  by 
him  on  the  advice  of  Mr.  Charles  Knight.  The  Government 
took  up  the  scheme  with  some  spirit  and  liberality.  The 
revenue  that  year  showed  a  deficiency,  but  they  determined 
to  run  the  further  risk  which  the  proposal  involved.  The 
commercial  community  had  naturally  been  stirred  greatly 
by  the  project  which  promised  so  much  relief  and  advan- 
tage. Sydney  Smith  was  very  much  mistaken,  indeed,  when 
he  fancied  that  it  was  only  to  please  his  old  and  excellent 
friend,  Mr.  Warburton,  that  the  ministry  gave  way  to  the 
innovation.  Petitions  from  all  the  commercial  communities 
were  pouring  in  to  support  the  plan,  and  to  ask  that  at  least 
it  should  have  a  fair  trial.  The  Government  at  length  de- 
termined to  bring  in  a  bill  which  should  provide  for  the  al- 
most immediate  introduction  of  Mr.  Hill's  scheme,  and  for 
the  abolition  of  the  franking  system  except  in  the  case  of 
official  letters  actually  sent  on  business  directly  belonging 
to  her  Majesty's  service.  The  bill  declared,  as  an  introduc- 
tory step,  that  the  charge  for  postage  should  be  at  the  rate 


SCIENCE  AND  SPEED.  69 

of  fourpence  for  each  letter  under  half  an  ounce  in  weight, 
irrespective  of  distance,  within  the  limits  of  the  United  King- 
dom. This,  however,  was  to  be  only  a  beginning;  for  on 
January  10th,  1840,  the  postage  was  fixed  at  the  uniform 
rate  of  one  penny  per  letter  of  not  more  than  half  an  ounce 
in  weight.  The  introductory  measure  was  not,  of  course, 
carried  without  opposition  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington,  in  his  characteristic  wray,  declared 
that  he  strongly  objected  to  the  scheme ;  but,  as  the  Govern- 
ment had  evidently  set  their  hearts  upon  it,  he  recommended 
the  House  of  Lords  not  to  offer  any  opposition  to  it.  In  the 
House  of  Commons  it  was  opposed  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  and 
Mr.  Goulburn,both  of  whom  strongly  condemned  the  whole 
scheme  as  likely  to  involve  the  country  in  vast  loss  of  rev- 
enue. The  measure,  however,  passed  into  law.  Some  idea 
of  the  effect  it  has  produced  upon  the  postal  correspondence 
of  the  country  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that  in  1839, 
the  last  year  of  the  heavy  postage,  the  number  of  letters 
delivered  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  was  a  little  more 
than  eighty-two  millions,  which  included  some  five  millions 
and  a  half  of  franked  letters  returning  nothing  to  the  reve- 
nues of  the  country;  whereas,  in  1875,  more  than  a  thousand 
millions  of  letters  were  delivered  in  the  United  Kingdom. 
The  population  during  the  same  time  has  not  nearly  dou- 
bled itself.  It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  principle 
of  Sir  Rowland  Hill's  reform  has  since  been  put  into  oper- 
ation in  every  civilized  country  in  the  world.  It  may  be 
added  that  before  long  we  shall,  in  all  human  probability,  see 
an  interoceanic  postage  established  at  a  rate  as  low  as  peo- 
ple sometimes  thought  Sir  Rowland  Hill  a  madman  for  rec- 
ommending as  applicable  to  our  inland  post.  The  time  is 
not  far  distant  when  a  letter  will  be  carried  from  London  to 
San  Francisco,  or  to  Tokio  in  Japan,  at  a  rate  of  charge  as 
small  as  that  which  made  financiers  stare  and  laugh  when  it 
was  suggested  as  profitable  remuneration  for  carrying  a  let- 
ter from  London  to  the  towns  of  Sussex  or  Hertfordshire. 
The  "Penny-post,"  let  it  be  said,  is  an  older  institution  than 
that  which  Sir  Rowland  Hill  introduced.  A  penny-post  for 
the  conveyance  of  letters  had  been  set  up  in  London  so  long 
ago  as  1683  ;  and  it  was  adopted  or  annexed  by  the  Govern- 
ment some  years  after.  An  effort  was  even  made  to  set  up 


70  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

a  half-penny  post  in  London,  in  opposition  to  the  official  pen- 
ny-post, in  1708  ;  but  the  Government  soon  crushed  this  vex- 
atious and  intrusive  rival.  In  1738  Dr.  Johnson  writes  to 
Mr.  Cave  "  to  entreat  that  you  will  be  pleased  to  inform  me, 
by  the  penny-post,  whether  you  resolve  to  print  the  poem." 
After  awhile  the  Government  changed  their  penny-post  to 
a  twopenny-post,  and  gradually  made  a  distinction  between 
district  and  other  postal  systems,  and  contrived  to  swell  the 
price  for  deliveries  of  all  kinds.  Long  before  even  this  time 
of  the  penny-post,  the  old  records  of  the  city  of  Bristol  con- 
tain an  account  of  the  payment  of  one  penny  for  the  car- 
riage  of  letters  to  London.  It  need  hardly  be  explained, 
however,  that  a  penny  in  that  time,  or  even  in  1683,  was  a 
payment  of  very  different  value  indeed  from  the  modest  sum 
which  Sir  Rowland  Hill  was  successful  in  establishing.  The 
ancient  penny-post  resembled  the  modern  penny-post  only 
in  name. 


CHAPTER  V. 

CHARTISM. 

IT  cannot,  however,  be  said  that  all  the  omens  under  which 
the  new  Queen's  reign  opened  at  home  were  as  auspicious 
as  the  coincidences  which  made  it  contemporary  with  the 
first  chapters  of  these  new  and  noble  developments  in  the 
history  of  science  and  invention.  On  the  contrary,  it  began 
amidst  many  grim  and  unpromising  conditions  in  our  social 
affairs.  The  winter  of  1837-'38  was  one  of  unusual  severity 
and  distress.  There  would  have  been  much  discontent  and 
grumbling  in  any  case  among  the  class  described  by  French 
writers  as  the  proletaire ;  but  the  complaints  were  aggra- 
vated by  a  common  belief  that  the  young  Queen  was  wholly 
under  the  influence  of  a  frivolous  and  selfish  minister,  who 
occupied  her  with  amusements  while  the  poor  were  starving. 
It  does  not  appear  that  there  was  at  any  time  the  slightest 
justification  for  such  a  belief;  but  it  prevailed  among  the 
working-classes  and  the  poor  very  generally,  and  added  to 
the  sufferings  of  genuine  want  the  bitterness  of  imaginary 
wrong.  Popular  education  was  little  looked  after;  so  far 


CHARTISM.  71 

as  the  State  was  concerned,  might  be  said  not  to  be  looked 
after  at  all.  The  laws  of  political  economy  were  as  yet  only 
within  the  appreciation  of  a  few,  who  were  regarded  not  un- 
commonly, because  of  their  theories,  somewhat  as  phrenolo- 
gists or  mesmerists  might  be  looked  on  in  a  more  enlighten- 
ed time.  Some  writers  have  made  a  great  deal  of  the  case 
of  Thorn  and  his  disciples  as  evidence  of  the  extraordinary 
ignorance  that  prevailed.  Thorn  was  a  broken-down  brew- 
er, and  in  fact  a  madman,  who  had  for  some  time  been  going 
about  in  Canterbury  and  other  parts  of  Kent  bedizened  in 
fantastic  costume,  and  styling  himself  at  first  Sir  William 
Courtenay,  of  Powderham  Castle,  Knight  of  Malta,  King  of 
Jerusalem,  king  of  the  gypsy  races,  and  we  know  not  what 
else.  He  announced  himself  as  a  great  political  reformer, 
and  for  awhile  he  succeeded  in  getting  many  to  believe  in 
and  support  him.  He  was  afterward  confined  for  some  time 
in  a  lunatic  asylum,  and  when  he  came  out  he  presented  him- 
self to  the  ignorant  peasantry  in  the  character  of  a  second 
Messiah.  He  found  many  followers  and  believers  again, 
among  a  humbler  class,  indeed,  than  those  whom  he  had 
formerly  won  over.  Much  of  his  influence  over  the  poor 
Kentish  laborers  was  due  to  his  denunciations  of  the  new 
Poor  Law,  which  was  then  popularly  hated  and  feared  with 
an  almost  insane  intensity  of  feeling.  Thorn  told  them  he 
had  come  to  regenerate  the  whole  world,  and  also  to  save 
his  followers  from  the  new  Poor  Law;  and  the  lattet  an- 
nouncement commended  the  former.  He  assembled  a  crowd 
of  his  supporters,  and  undertook  to  lead  them  to  an  attack 
on  Canterbury.  With  his  own  hand  he  shot  dead  a  police- 
man who  endeavored  to  oppose  his  movements,  exactly  as 
a  savior  of  society  of  bolder  pretensions  and  greater  suc- 
cess did  at  Boulogne  not  long  after.  Two  companies  of 
soldiers  came  out  from  Canterbury  to  disperse  the  rioters. 
The  officer  in  command  was  shot  dead  by  Thorn.  Thorn's 
followers  then  charged  the  unexpecting  soldiers  so  fiercely 
that  for  a  moment  there  was  some  confusion ;  but  the  sec- 
ond company  fired  a  volley  which  stretched  Thorn  and  sev- 
eral of  his  adherents  lifeless  on  the  field.  That  was  an  end 
of  the  rising.  Several  of  Thorn's  followers  were  afterward 
tried  for  murder,  convicted,  and  sentenced ;  but  some  pity 
was  felt  for  their  ignorance  and  their  delusion,  and  they  were 


72  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

not  consigned  to  death.  Long  after  the  fall  of  their  pre- 
posterous hero  and  saint,  many  of  Thorn's  disciples  believed 
that  he  would  return  from  the  grave  to  carry  out  the  prom- 
ised work  of  his  mission.  All  this  was  lamentable,  but  could 
hardly  be  regarded  as  specially  characteristic  of  the  early 
years  of  the  present  reign.  The  Thorn  delusion  was  not 
much  more  absurd  than  the  Tichborne  mania  of  a  later  day. 
Down  to  our  own  time  there  are  men  and  women  among  the 
Social  Democrats  of  cultured  Germany  who  still  cherish  the 
hope  that  their  idol  Ferdinand  Lassalle  will  come  back  from 
the  dead  to  lead  and  guide  them. 

But  there  were  political  and  social  dangers  in  the  open- 
ing of  the  present  reign  more  serious  than  any  that  could 
have  been  conjured  up  by  a  crazy  man  in  a  fantastic  dress. 
There  were  delusions  having  deeper  roots  and  showing  a 
more  inviting  shelter  than  any  that  a  religious  fanatic  of  the 
vulgar  type  could  cause  to  spring  up  in  our  society. 

Only  a  lew  weeks  after  the  coronation  of  the  Queen  a 
great  Radical  meeting  was  held  in  Birmingham.  A  mani- 
festo was  adopted  there  which  afterward  came  to  be  known 
as  the  Chartist  petition.  With  that  movement  Chartism  be- 
gan to  be  one  of  the  most  disturbing  influences  of  the  polit- 
ical life  of  the  country.  It  is  a  movement  which,  although 
its  influence  may  now  be  said  to  have  wholly  passed  away, 
Avell  deserves  to  have  its  history  fully  written.  For  ten 
years  it  agitated  England.  It  sometimes  seemed  to  threat- 
en an  actual  uprising  of  all  the  proletaire  against  what  were 
then  the  political  and  social  institutions  of  the  country.  It 
might  have  been  a  very  serious  danger  if  the  State  had  been 
involved  in  any  external  difficulties.  It  was  backed  by 
much  genuine  enthusiasm,  passion,  and  intelligence.  It  ap- 
pealed strongly  and  naturally  to  whatever  there  was  of  dis- 
content among  the  working-classes.  It  afforded  a  most  ac- 
ceptable and  convenient  means  by  which  ambitious  politi- 
cians of  the  self-seeking  order  could  raise  themselves  into 
temporary  importance.  Its  fierce  and  fitful  flame  went  out 
at  last  under  the  influence  of  the  clear,  strong,  and  steady 
light  of  political  reform  and  education.  The  one  great  les- 
son it  teaches  is,  that  political  agitation  lives  and  is  formi- 
dable only  by  virtue  of  what  is  reasonable  in  its  demands. 
Thousands  of  ignorant  and  miserable  men  all  over  the  coun- 


CHAETISM.  73 

try  joined  the  Chartist  agitation  who  cared  nothing  about 
the  substantial  value  of  its  political  claims.  They  were 
poor,  they  were  overworked,  they  were  badly  paid,  their 
lives  were  altogether  wretched.  They  got  into  their  heads 
some  wild  idea  that  the  People's  Charter  would  give  them 
better  food  and  wages,  and  lighter  work  if  it  were  obtained, 
and  that  for  that  very  reason  the  aristocrats  and  the  officials 
would  not  grant  it.  No  political  concessions  could  really 
have  satisfied  these  men.  If  the  Charter  had  been  granted 
in  1838,  they  would  no  doubt  have  been  as  dissatisfied  as 
ever  in  1839.  But  the  discontent  of  these  poor  creatures 
would  have  brought  with  it  little  danger  to  the  State  if  it 
had  not  become  part  of  the  support  of  an  organization  which 
could  show  some  sound  and  good  reason  for  the  demands  it 
made.  The  moment  that  the  clear  and  practical  political 
grievances  were  dealt  with,  the  organization  melted  way. 
Vague  discontent,  however  natural  and  excusable  it  may 
be,  is  only  formidable  in  politics  when  it  helps  to  swell  the 
strength  and  the  numbers  of  a  crowd  which  calls  for  some 
reform  that  can  be  made  and  is  withheld.  One  of  the  vnl- 
garest  fallacies  of  state-craft  is  to  declare  that  it  is  of  no 
use  granting  the  reforms  which  would  satisfy  reasonable  de- 
mands, because  there  are  still  unreasonable  agitators  whom 
these  will  not  satisfy.  Get  the  reasonable  men  on  your  side, 
and  you  need  not' fear  the  unreasonable.  This  is  the  lesson 
taught  to  statesmen  by  the  Chartist  agitation. 

A  funeral  oration  over  Chartism  was  pronounced  by 
Sir  John  Campbell,  then  Attorney-general,  afterward  Lord 
Chief-justice  Campbell,  at  a  public  dinner  at.  Edinburgh  on 
October  24th,  1839.  He  spoke  at  some  length  and  with 
much  complacency  of  Chartism  as  an  agitation  which  had 
passed  away.  Some  ten  days  afterward  occurred  the  most 
formidable  outburst  of  Chartism  that  had  been  known  up  to 
that  time,  and  Chartism  continued  to  be  an  active  and  a  dis- 
turbing influence  in  England  for  nearly  ten  years  after.  If 
Sir  John  Campbell  had  told  his  friends  and  constituents 
at  the  Edinburgh  dinner  that  the  influence  of  Chartism  was 
just  about  to  make  itself  really  felt,  he  would  have  shown 
himself  a  somewhat  more  acute  politician  than  we  now  un- 
derstand him  to  be.  Seldom  has  a  public  man  setting  up 
to  be  a  political  authority  made  a  worse  hit  than  he  did  in 

I.— 4 


74:  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

that  memorable  declaration.  Campbell  was,  indeed,  only  a 
clever,  shrewd  lawyer  of  the  hard  and  narrow  class.  He 
never  made  any  pretension  to  statesmanship,  or  even  to 
great  political  knowledge ;  and  his  unfortunate  blunder 
might  be  passed  over  without  notice  were  it  not  that  it  il- 
lustrates fairly  enough  the  manner  in  which  men  of  better 
information  and  judgment  than  he  were  at  that  time  in  the 
habit  of  disposing  of  all  inconvenient  political  problems. 
The  Attorney-general  was  aware  that  there  had  been  a  few 
riots  and  a  few  arrests,  and  that  the  law  had  been  what  he 
would  call  vindicated  ;  and  as  he  had  no  manner  of  sympa- 
thy with  the  motives  which  could  lead  men  to  distress  them- 
selves and  their  friends  about  imaginary  charters,  he  as- 
sumed that  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter.  It  did  not  oc- 
cur to  him  to  ask  himself  whether  there  might  not  be  some 
underlying  causes  to  explain,  if  riot  to  excuse,  the  agitation 
that  just  then  began  to  disturb  the  country,  and  that  con- 
tinued to  disturb  it  for  so  many  years.  Even  if  he  had  in- 
quired into  the  subject,  it  is  not  likely  that  he  would  have 
come  to  any  wiser  conclusion  about  it.  The  dramatic  in- 
stinct, if  we  may  be  allowed  to  call  it  so,  which  enables  a 
man  to  put  himself  for  the  moment  into  the  condition  and 
mood  of  men  entirely  unlike  himself  in  feelings  and  condi- 
tions, is  an  indispensable  element  of  real  statesmanship  ;  but 
it  is  the  rarest  of  all  gifts  among  politicians  of  the  second 
order.  If  Sir  John  Campbell  had  turned  his  attention  to 
the  Chartist  question,  he  would  only  have  found  that  a  num- 
ber of  men,  for  the  most  part  poor  and  ignorant,  were  com- 
plaining of  grievances  where  he  could  not  for  himself  see 
any  substantial  grievances  at  all.  That  would  have  been 
enough  for  him.  If  a  solid,  wealthy,  and  rising  lawyer  could 
not  see  any  cause  for  grumbling,  he  would  have  made  up 
his  mind  that  no  reasonable  persons  worthy  the  considera- 
tion of  sensible  legislators  would  continue  to  grumble  after 
they  had  been  told  by  those  in  authority  that  it  was  their 
business  to  keep  quiet.  But  if  he  had,  on  the  other  hand, 
looked  with  the  light  of  sympathetic  intelligence,  of  that 
dramatic  instinct  which  has  just  been  mentioned,  at  the  con- 
dition of  the  classes  among  whom  Chartism  was  then  rife, 
he  would  have  seen  that  it  was  not  likely  the  agitation  could 
be  put  down  by  a  few  prosecutions  and  a  few  arrests,  and 


CHARTISM.  75 

the  censure  of  a  prosperous  Attorney -general.  He  would 
have  seen  that  Chartism  was  not  a  cause  but  a  consequence. 
The  intelligence  of  a  very  ordinary  man  who  approached 
the  question  in  an  impartial  mood  might  have  seen  that 
Chartism  was  the  expression  of  a  vague  discontent  with 
very  positive  grievances  and  evils. 

We  have,  in  our  time,  outlived  the  days  of  political  ab- 
stractions. The  catchwords  which  thrilled  our  forefathers 
with  emotion  on  one  side  or  the  other  fall  with  hardly  any 
meaning  on  our  ears.  We  smile  at  such  phrases  as  "  the 
rights  of  man."  We  hardly  know  what  is  meant  by  talk- 
ing of  "the  people"  as  the  words  were  used  long  ago,  when 
"the  people"  was  understood  to  mean  a  vast  mass  of  wrong- 
ed persons  who  had  no  representation,  and  were  oppressed 
by  privilege  and  the  aristocracy.  We  seldom  talk  of  "  lib- 
erty ;"  any  one  venturing  to  found  a  theory  or  even  a  decla- 
mation on  some  supposed  deprival  of  liberty  would  soon  find 
himself  in  the  awkward  position  of  being  called  on  to  give 
a  scientific  definition  of  what  he  understood  liberty  to  be. 
He  would  be  as  much  puzzled  as  were  certain  English  work- 
ing-men, who,  desiring  to  express  to  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill 
their  sympathy  with  what  they  called  in  the  slang  of  Conti- 
nental democracy  "  the  Revolution,"  were  calmly  bidden  by 
the  great  Liberal  thinker  to  ask  themselves  what  they  meant 
by  "the  Revolution,"  which  revolution,  what  revolution,  and 
why  they  sympathized  with  it.  But  perhaps  we  are  all  a 
little  too  apt  to  think  that  because  these  abstractions  have 
no  living  meaning  now  they  never  had  any  living  meaning 
at  all.  They  convey  no  manner  of  clear  idea  in  England 
now,  but  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  they  never 
conveyed  any  such  idea.  The  phrase  which  Mr.  Mill  so 
properly  condemned  when  he  found  it  in  the  mouths  of  Eng- 
lish working-men  had  a  very  intelligible  and  distinct  mean- 
ing when  it  first  came  to  be  used  in  France  and  throughout 
the  Continent.  "  The  Revolution  "  expressed  a  clear  reality, 
as  recognizable  by  the  intelligence  of  all  wrho  heard  it  as 
the  name  of  Free-trade  or  of  Ultramontanism  to  men  of  our 
time.  "  The  Revolution  "  was  the  principle  which  was  as- 
serting all  over  Europe  the  overthrow  of  the  old  absolute 
power  of  kings,  and  it  described  it  just  as  well  as  any  word 
could  do.  It  is  meaningless  in  our  day,  for  the  very  reason 


76  A  HISTORY   OF  OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

that  it  was  full  of  meaning  then.  So  it  was  with  "  the  peo- 
ple," and  "the  rights  of  the  people,"  and  the  "rights  of 
labor,"  and  all  the  other  grandiloquent  phrases  which  seem 
to  us  so  empty  and  so  meaningless  now.  They  are  empty 
and  meaningless  at  the  present  hour ;  but  they  have  no  ap- 
plication now  chiefly  because  they  had  application  then. 

The  Reform  Bill  of  1832  had  been  necessarily,  and  perhaps 
naturally,  a  class  measure.  It  had  done  great  things  for  the 
constitutional  system  of  England.  It  had  averted  a  revo- 
lution which  without  some  such  concession  would  probably 
have  been  inevitable.  It  had  settled  forever  the  question 
which  was  so  fiercely  and  so  gravely  debated  during  the 
discussions  of  the  reform  years,  whether  the  English  Con- 
stitution is  or  is  not  based  upon  a  system  of  popular  repre- 
sentation. To  many  at  present  it  may  seem  hardly  credible 
that  sane  men  could  have  denied  the  existence  of  the  repre- 
sentative principle.  But  during  the  debates  on  the  great 
Reform  Bill  such  a  denial  was  the  strong  point  of  many  of 
the  leading  opponents  of  the  measure,  including  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  himself.  The  principle  of  the  Constitution,  it 
was  soberly  argued,  is  that  the  sovereign  invites  whatever 
communities  or  interests  he  thinks  fit  to  send  in  persons  to 
Parliament  to  take  council  with  him  on  the  affairs  of  the  na- 
tion. This  idea  was  got  rid  of  by  the  Reform  Bill.  That 
bill  abolished  fifty-six  nomination  or  rotten  boroughs,  and 
took  away  half  the  representation  from  thirty  others ;  it 
disposed  of  the  seats  thus  obtained  by  giving  sixty-five  ad- 
ditional representatives  to  the  counties,  and  conferring  the 
right  of  returning  members  on  Manchester,  Leeds,  Birming- 
ham, and  some  thirty-nine  large  and  prosperous  towns  which 
had  previously  had  no  representation  ;  while,  as  Lord  John 
Russell  said  in  his  speech  when  he  introduced  the  bill  in 
March,  1831,  "  a  ruined  mound"  sent  two  representatives  to 
Parliament ;  "  three  niches  in  a  stone  wall  "  sent  two  repre- 
sentatives to  Parliament ;  "a  park  where  no  houses  were  to 
be  seen  "  sent  two  representatives  to  Parliament.  The  bill 
introduced  a  £10  household  qualification  for  boroughs,  and 
extended  the  county  franchise  to  lease -holders  and  copy- 
holders. But  it  left  the  working-classes  almost  altogether 
out  of  the  franchise.  Not  merely  did  it  confer  no  political 
emancipation  on  them,  but  it  took  away  in  many  places 


CHARTISM.  77 

the  peculiar  franchises  which  made  the  working-men  voters. 
There  were  communities — such,  for  example,  as  that  of  Pres- 
ton, in  Lancashire — where  the  system  of  franchise  existing 
created  something  like  universal  suffrage.  All  this  was 
smoothed  away,  if  such  an  expression  may  be  used,  by  the 
Reform  Bill.  In  truth,  the  Reform  Bill  broke  down  the  mo- 
nopoly which  the  aristocracy  and  landed  classes  had  enjoy- 
ed, and  admitted  the  middle  classes  to  a  share  of  the  law- 
making  power.  The  representation  was  divided  between  the 
aristocracy  and  the  middle  class,  instead  of  being,  as  before, 
the  exclusive  possession  of  the  former. 

The  working-class,  iu  the  opinion  of  many  of  their  ablest 
and  most  influential  representatives,  were  not  merely  left 
out  but  shouldered  out.  This  was  all  the  more  exasperat- 
ing because  the  excitement  and  agitation  by  the  strength 
of  which  the  Reform  Bill  was  carried  in  the  teeth  of  so  much 
resistance  were  kept  up  by  the  working-men.  There  was, 
besides,  at  the  time  of  the  Reform  Bill,  a  very  high  degree 
of  what  may  be  called  the  temperature  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution still  heating  the  senses  and  influencing  the  judgment 
even  of  the  aristocratic  leaders  of  the  movement.  What 
Richter  calls  the  "seed -grains"  of  the  revolutionary  doc- 
trines had  been  blown  abroad  so  widely  that  they  rested 
in  some  of  the  highest  as  well  as  in  most  of  the  lowliest 
places.  Some  of  the  Reform  leaders— Lord  Durham,  for  in- 
stance— were  prepared  to  go  much  farther  in  the  way  of 
Radicalism  than  at  a  later  period  Mr.  Cobden  or  Mr.  Bright 
would  have  gone.  There  was  more  than  once  a  sort  of  ap- 
peal to  the  working-men  of  the  country  which,  however  dif- 
ferently it  may  have  been  meant,  certainly  sounded  in  their 
ears  as  if  it  were  an  intimation  that  in  the  event  of  the  bill 
being  resisted  too  long  it  might  be  necessary  to  try  what 
the  strength  of  a  popular  uprising  could  do.  Many  years 
after,  in  the  defence  of  the  Irish  state-prisoners  at  Clonmel, 
the  counsel  who  pleaded  their  cause  insisted  that  they  had 
warrant  for  their  conduct  in  certain  proceedings  which  were 
in  preparation  during  the  Reform  agitation.  He  talked  with 
undisguised  significance  of  the  teacher  being  in  the  ministry 
and  the  pupils  in  the  dock;  and  quoted  Captain  Macheath 
to  the  effect  that  if  laws  were  made  equally  for  every  de- 
gree, there  might  even  then  be  rare  company  on  Tyburn 


78  A   HISTORY   OF   OUE   OWN  TIMES. 

tree.  It  is  not  necessary  to  attach  too  much  importance  to 
assertions  of  this  kind,  or  to  accept  them  as  sober  contribu- 
tions to  history;  but  they  are  very  instructive  as  a  means 
of  enabling  us  to  understand  the  feeling  of  soreness  which 

o  o 

remained  in  the  minds  of  large  masses  of  the  population 
when,  after  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill,  they  found  them- 
selves left  out  in  the  cold.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  they  be- 
lieved that  their  strength  had  been  kept  in  reserve  or  in  ter- 
rorem  to  secure  the  carrying  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and  that 
when  it  was  carried  they  were  immediately  thrown  over  by 
those  whom  they  had  thus  helped  to  pass  it.  Therefore,  at 
the  time  when  the  young  sovereign  ascended  the  throne, 
the  working-classes  in  all  the  large  towns  were  in  a  state 
of  profound  disappointment  and  discontent,  almost,  indeed, 
of  disaffection.  Chartism  was  beginning  to  succeed  to  the 
Reform  agitation.  The  leaders  who  had  come  from  the 
ranks  of  the  aristocracy  had  been  discarded  or  had  with- 
drawn. In  some  cases  they  had  withdrawn  in  perfect  good 
faith,  believing  sincerely  that  they  had  done  the  work  which 
they  undertook  to  do,  and  that  that  was  all  the  country  re- 
quired. Men  drawn  more  immediately  from  the  working- 
class  itself,  or  who  had  in  some  way  boon  dropped  down 
by  a  class  higher  in  the  social  scale,  took  up  the  popular 
leadership  now. 

Chartism  may  be  said  to  have  sprung  definitively  into  ex- 
istence in  consequence  of  the  formal  declarations  of  the  lead- 
ers of  the  Liberal  party  in  Parliament  that  they  did  not  in- 
tend to  push  Reform  any  farther.  At  the  opening  of  the 
first  Parliament  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign  the  question  was 
brought  to  a  test.  A  Radical  member  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons moved  as  an  amendment  to  the  address  a  resolution 
declaring  in  favor  of  the  ballot  and  of  shorter  duration  of 
Parliaments.  Only  twenty  members  voted  for  it;  and  Lord 
John  Russell  declared  distinctly  against  all  such  attempts 
to  reopen  the  Reform  question.  It  was  impossible  that  this 
declaration  should  not  be  received  with  disappointment 
and  anger  by  great  masses  of  the  people.  They  had  been 
in  the  full  assurance  that  the  Reform  Bill  itself  was  only 
the  means  by  which  greater  changes  were  to  be  brought 
about.  Lord  John  Russell  said  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that  to  push  Reform  any  farther  then  would  be  a  breach  of 


CHARTISM.  79 

faith  toward  those  who  helped  him  to  carry  it.  A  great 
many  outside  Parliament  not  unnaturally  regarded  the  re- 
fusal to  go  any  farther  as  a  breach  of  faith  toward  them  on 
the  part  of  the  Liberal  leaders.  Lord  John  Russell  was 
right  from  his  point  of  view.  It  would  have  been  impossi- 
ble to  carry  the  Reform  movement  any  farther  just  then. 
In  a  country  like  ours,  where  interests  are  so  nicely  bal- 
anced, it  must  always  happen  that  a  forward  movement  in 
politics  is  followed  by  a  certain  reaction.  The  parliamen- 
tary leaders  in  Parliament  were  already  beginning  to  feel  the 
influence  of  this  law  of  our  political  growth.  It  would  have 
been  hopeless  to  attempt  to  get  the  upper  and  middle  classes 
at  such  a  time  to  consent  to  any  further  changes  of  consid- 
erable importance^  But  the  feeling  of  those  who  had  helped 
so  materially  to  bring  about  the  Reform  movement  was  at 
least  intelligible  when  they  found  that  its  effects  were  to 
stop  just  short  of  the  measures  which  alone  could  have  any 
direct  influence  on  their  political  position. 

A  conference  was  held  almost  immediately  between  a  few 
of  the  Liberal  members  of  Parliament  who  professed  radical 
opinions  and  some  of  the  leaders  of  the  working-men.  At 
this  conference  the  programme,  or  what  was  always  after- 
ward known  as  "  the  Charter,"  was  agreed  upon  and  drawn 
up.  The  name  of"  Charter"  appears  to  have  been  given  to 
it  for  the  first  time  by  O'Connell.  "There's  your  Charter," 
he  said  to  the  secretary  of  the  Working-men's  Association  ; 
"agitate  for  it,  and  never  be  content  with  anything  less." 
It  is  a  great  thing  accomplished  in  political  agitation  to  have 
found  a  telling  name.  A  name  is  almost  as  important  for  a 
new  agitation  as  for  a  new  novel.  The  title  of  "The  Peo- 
ple's Charter"  would  of  itself  have  launched  the  movement. 

Quietly  studied  now,  the  People's  Charter  does  not  seem 
a  very  formidable  document.  There  is  little  smell  of  gun- 
powder about  it.  Its  "points,"  as  they  were  called,  were 
six.  Manhood  Suffrage  came  first.  It  was  then  called  uni- 
versal suffrage,  but  it  only  meant  manhood  suffrage,  for  the 
promoters  of  the  movement  had  not  the  slightest  idea  of  in- 
sisting on  the  franchise  for  women.  The  second  was  Annual 
Parliaments.  Vote  by  Ballot  was  the  third.  Abolition  of 
the  Property  Qualification  (then  and  for  many  years  after 
required  for  the  election  of  a  member  to  Parliament)  was 


80  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

the  fourth.  The  Payment  of  Members  was  the  fifth ;  and 
the  Division  of  the  Country  into  Equal  Electoral  Districts, 
the  sixth  of  the  famous  points.  Of  these  proposals  some,  it 
will  be  seen,  were  perfectly  reasonable.  Not  one  was  so  ab- 
solutely unreasonable  as  to  be  outside  the  range  of  fair  and 
quiet  discussion  among  practical  politicians.  Three  of  the 
points  —  half,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  whole  number — have 
already  been  made  part  of  our  constitutional  system.  The 
existing  franchise  may  be  virtually  regarded  as  manhood 
suffrage.  We  have  for  years  been  voting  by  means  of  a 
written  paper  dropped  in  a  ballot-box.  The  property  quali- 
fication for  members  of  Parliament  could  hardly  be  said  to 
have  been  abolished.  Such  a  word  seems  far  too  grand  and 
dignified  to  describe  the  fate  that  befell  it.  We  should 
rather  say  that  it  was  extinguished  by  its  own  absurdity 
and  viciousness.  It  never  kept  out  of  Parliament  any  per- 
son legally  disqualified,  and  it  was  the  occasion  of  incessant 
tricks  and  devices  which  would  surely  have  been  counted 
disreputable  and  disgraceful  to  those  who  engaged  in  them, 
but  that  the  injustice  and  folly  of  the  system  generated  a 
sort  of  false  public  conscience  where  it  was  concerned,  and 
made  people  think  it  as  lawful  to  cheat  it,  as  at  one  time  the 
most  respectable  persons  in  private  life  thought  it  allowable 
to  cheat  the  revenue  and  wear  smuggled  lace  or  drink  smug- 
gled brandy.  The  proposal  to  divide  the  country  into  equal 
electoral  districts  is  one  which  can  hardly  yet  be  regarded 
as  having  come  to  any  test.  But  it  is  almost  certain  that 
sooner  or  later  some  alteration  of  our  present  system  in  that 
direction  will  be  adopted.  Of  the  two  other  points  of  the 
Charter,  the  payment  of  members  may  be  regarded  as  de- 
cidedly objectionable;  and  that  for  yearly  parliaments  as 
embodying  a  proposition  which  would  make  public  life  an 
almost  insufferable  nuisance  to  those  actively  concerned  in 
it.  But  neither  of  these  two  proposals  would  be  looked 
upon  in  our  time  as  outside  tire  range  of  legitimate  political 
discussion.  Indeed,  the  difficulty  any  one  engaged  in  their 
advocacy  would  find  just  now  would  be  in  getting  any  con- 
siderable body  of  listeners  to  take  the  slightest  interest  in 
the  argument  either  for  or  against  them. 

O  ~ 

The  Chartists  might  be  roughly  divided  into  three  classes 
— the  political  Chartists,  the  social  Chartists,  and  the  Char- 


CHARTISM.  81 

tists  of  vague  discontent,  who  joined  the  movement  because 
they  were  wretched  and  felt  angry.  The  first  were  the  reg- 
ular political  agitators,  who  wanted  a  wider  popular  repre- 
sentation ;  the  second  were  chiefly  led  to  the  movement  by 
their  hatred  of  the  "bread -tax."  These  two  classes  were 
perfectly  clear  as  to  what  they  wanted :  some  of  their  de- 
mands were  just  and  reasonable ;  none  of  them  were  without 
the  sphere  of  rational  and  peaceful  controversy.  The  dis- 
ciples of  mere  discontent  naturally  swerved  alternately  to 
the  side  of  those  leaders  or  sections  who  talked  loudest  and 
fiercest  against  the  law-makers  and  the  constituted  authori- 
ties. Chartism  soon  split  itself  into  two  general  divisions — 
the  moral  force,  and  the  physical  force  Chartism.  Nothing 
can  be  more  unjust  than  to  represent  the  leaders  and  pro- 
moters of  the  movement  as  mere  factious  and  self-seeking 
demagogues.  Some  of  them  were  men  of  great  ability  and 
eloquence ;  some  were  impassioned  young  poets  drawn  from 
the  class  whom  Kingsley  has  described  in  his  "Alton  Locke;" 
some  were  men  of  education;  many  were  earnest  and  de- 
voted fanatics;  and, so  far  as  we  can  judge,  all,  or  nearly  all, 
were  sincere.  Even  the  man  who  did  the  movement  most 
harm,  and  who  made  himself  most  odious  to  all  reasonable 
outsiders,  the  once  famous,  now  forgotten,  Feargus  O'Con- 
nor, appears  to  have  been  sincere,  and  to  "have  personally 
lost  more  than  he  gained  by  his  Chartism.  Four  or  five 
years  after  the  collapse  of  what  may  be  called  the  active 
Chartist  agitation,  a  huge  white-headed,  vacuous-eyed  man 
was  to  be  seen  of  mornings  wandering  through  the  arcades 
of  Covent  Garden  Market,  looking  at  the  fruits  and  flowers, 
occasionally  taking  up  a  flower,  smelling  at  it,  and  putting 
it  down,  with  a  smile  of  infantile  satisfaction ;  a  man  who 
might  have  reminded  observers  of  Mr.  Dick  in  Dickens's 
"David  Copperfield  ;"  and  this  was  the  once  renowned, once 
dreaded  and  detested  Feargus  O'Connor.  For  some  time 
before  his  death  his  reason  had  wholly  deserted  him.  Men 
did  not  know  at  first  in  the  House  of  Commons  the  meaning 
of  the  odd  pranks  which  Feargus  was  beginning  to  play 
there  to  the  bewilderment  of  the  great  assembly.  At  last 
it  was  seen  that  the  fallen  leader  of  Chartism  was  a  hopeless 
madman.  It  is  hardly  to  be  doubted  that  insanity  had  long 
been  growing  on  him,  and  that  some  at  least  of  his  political 

4* 


82  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

follies  and  extravagances  were  the  result  of  an  increasing 
disorder  of  the  brain.  In  his  day  he  had  been  the  very 
model  for  a  certain  class  of  demagogue.  He  was  of  com- 
manding presence, great  stature,and  almost  gigantic  strength. 
He  had  education ;  he  had  mixed  in  good  society ;  he  be- 
longed to  an  old  family,  and,  indeed,  boasted  his  descent  from 
a  line  of  Irish  kings,  not  without  some  ground  for  the  claim. 
He  had  been  a  man  of  some  fashion  at  one  time,  and  had  led 
a  life  of  wild  dissipation  in  his  early  years.  He  had  a  kind 
of  eloquence  which  told  with  immense  power  on  a  mass  of 
half-ignorant  hearers ;  and,  indeed,  men  who  had  no  manner 
of  liking  for  him  or  sympathy  with  his  doctrines  have  de- 
clared that  he  was  the  most  effective  mob  orator  they  had 
ever  heard.  He  was  ready,  if  needs  were,  to  fight  his  way 
single-handed  through  a  whole  mass  of  Tory  opponents  at  a 
contested  election.  Thomas  Cooper,  the  venerable  poet  of 
Chartism,  has  given  an  amusing  description,  in  his  autobiog- 
raphy, of  Feargus  O'Connor,  who  was  then  his  hero,  leaping 
from  a  wagon  at  a  Nottingham  election  into  the  midst  of  a 
crowd  of  Tory  butchers,  and  with  only  two  stout  Chartist 
followei's  fighting  his  way  through  all  opposition,  "flooring 
the  butchers  like  ninepins."  "  Once,"  says  Mr.  Cooper,  "  the 
Tory  lambs  fought  off  all  who  surrounded  him  and  got  him 
down,  and  my  heart  quaked — for  I  thought  they  would  kill 
him.  But  in  a  very  few  moments  his  red  head  emerged 
again  from  the  rough  human  billows,  and  he  was  fighting 
his  way  as  before." 

There  were  many  men  in  the  movement  of  a  nobler  moral 
nature  than  poor  huge,  wild  Feargus  O'Connor.  There  were 
men  like  Thomas  Cooper  himself,  devoted,  impassioned,  full 
of  poetic  aspiration,  and  no  scant  measure  of  poetic  inspira- 
tion as  well.  Henry  Vincent  was  a  man  of  unimpeachable 
character  and  of  some  ability,  an  effective  popular  speaker, 
who  has  since  maintained  in  a  very  unpretending  way  a  con- 
siderable reputation.  Ernest  Jones  was  as  sincere  and  self- 
sacrificing  a  man  as  ever  joined  a  sinking  cause.  He  had 
proved  his  sincerity  more  in  deed  than  word.  His  talents 
only  fell  short  of  that  height  Avhich  might  claim  to  be  re- 
garded as  genius.  His  education  was  that  of  a  scholar  and 
a  gentleman.  Many  men  of  education  and  ability  were 
drawn  into  sympathy,  if  not  into  actual  co-operation,  with  the 


CHARTISM.  83 

Chartists  by  a  conviction  that  some  of  their  claims  were 
well-founded,  and  that  the  grievances  of  the  working-classes, 
which  were  terrible  to  contemplate,  were  such  as  a  Parlia- 
ment better  representing  all  classes  would  be  able  to  rem- 
edy. Some  of  these  men  have  since  made  for  themselves  an 
honorable  name  in  Parliament  and  out  of  it;  some  of  them 
have  risen  to  high  political  position.  It  is  necessary  to  read 
such  a  book  as  Thomas  Cooper's  autobiography,  to  under- 
stand how  genuine  was  the  poetic  and  political  enthusiasm 
which  was  at  the  heart  of  the  Chartist  movement,  and  how 
bitter  was  the  suffering  which  drove  into  its  ranks  so  many 
thousands  of  stout  working-men  who,  in  a  country  like  Eng- 
land, might  well  have  expected  to  be  able  to  live  by  the 
hard  work  they  were  only  too  willing  to  do.  One  must 
read  the  Anti-Corn-law  rhymes  of  Ebenezer  Elliott  to  un- 
derstand how  the  "  bread  -  tax  "  became  identified  in  the 
minds  of  the  very  best  of  the  working-class,  and  identified 
justly,  with  the  system  of  political  and  economical  legisla- 
tion which  was  undoubtedly  kept  up,  although  not  of  con- 
scious purpose,  for  the  benefit  of  a  class.  In  the  minds  of 
too  many,  the  British  Constitution  meant  hard  work  and 
half-starvation. 

A  whole  literature  of  Chartist  newspapers  sprang  up  to 
advocate  the  cause.  The  Northern  /Star,  owned  and  con- 
ducted by  Feargus  O'Connor,  was  the  most  popular  and  in- 
fluential of  them ;  but  every  great  town  had  its  Chartist 
press.  Meetings  were  held  at  which  sometimes  very  violent 
language  was  employed.  It  began  to  be  the  practice  to  hold 
torch-light  meetings  at  night,  and  many  men  went  armed  to 
these,  and  open  clamor  was  made  by  the  wilder  of  the  Char- 
tists for  an  appeal  to  arms.  A  formidable  riot  took  place  in 
Birmingham,  where  the  authorities  endeavored  to  put  down 
a  Chartist  meeting.  Ebenezer  Elliott  and  other  sensible 
sympathizers  endeavored  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  more  ex- 
treme Chartists  to  the  folly  of  all  schemes  for  measures  of 
violence;  but, for  the  time, the  more  violent  a  speaker  was, 
the  better  chance  he  had  of  becoming  popular.  Efforts  were 
made  at  times  to  bring  about  a  compromise  with  the  mid- 
dle-class Liberals  and  the  Anti-Corn-law  leaders;  but  all 
such  attempts  proved  failures.  The  Chartists  would  not 
give  up  their  Charter ;  many  of  them  would  not  renounce 


84  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  hope  of  seeing  it  carried  by  force.  The  Government 
began  to  prosecute  some  of  the  orators  and  leaders  of  the 
Charter  movement;  and  some  of  these  were  convicted, im- 
prisoned, and  treated  with  great  severity.  Henry  Vincent's 
imprisonment  at  Newport,  in  Wales,  was  the  occasion  of  an 
attempt  at  rescue  which  bore  a  very  close  resemblance  in- 
deed to  a  scheme  of  organized  and  armed  rebellion. 

Newport  had  around  it  a  large  mining  population,  and  the 
miners  were  nearly  all  physical-force  Chartists.  It  was  ar- 
ranged among  them  to  march  in  three  divisions  to  a  certain 
rendezvous,  and  when  they  had  formed  a  junction  there, 
which  was  to  be  two  hours  after  midnight,  to  march  into 
Newport,  attack  the  jail,  and  effect  the  release  of  Vincent 
and  other  prisoners.  The  attempt  was  to  be  under  the  chief 
command  of  Mr.  Frost,  a  trader  of  Newport,  who  had  been 
a  magistrate,  but  was  deprived  of  the  commission  of  the 
peace  for  violent  political  speeches  —  a  man  of  respectable 
character  and  conduct  up  to  that  time.  This  was  on  No- 
vember 4th,  1839.  There  was  some  misunderstanding  and 
delay,  as  almost  invariably  happens  in  such  enterprises,  and 
the  divisions  of  the  little  army  did  not  effect  their  junction 
in  time.  When  they  entered  Newport,  they  found  the  au- 
thorities fully  prepared  to  meet  them.  Frost  entered  the 
town  at  the  head  of  one  division  only,  another  following  him 
at  some  interval.  The  third  was  nowhere,  as  far  as  the  ob- 
ject of  the  enterprise  was  concerned.  A  conflict  took  place 
between  the  rioters  and  the  soldiery  and  police,  and  the  riot- 
ers were  dispersed  with  a  loss  of  some  ten  killed  and  fifty 
wounded.  In  their  flight  they  encountered  some  of  the  oth- 
er divisions  coming  up  to  the  enterprise  all  too  late.  Noth- 
ing was  more  remarkable  than  the  courage  shown  by  the 
mayor  of  Newport,  the  magistrates,  and  the  little  body  of 
soldiers.  The  mayor,  Mr.  Phillips,  received  two  gunshot 
wounds.  Frost  was  arrested  next  day  along  with  some  of 
his  colleagues.  They  were  tried  on  June  6th,  1840.  The 
charge  against  them  was  one  of  high-treason.  There  did 
really  appear  ground  enough  to  suppose  that  the  expedition 
led  by  Frost  was  not  merely  to  rescue  Vincent,  but  to  set 
going  the  great  rebellious  movement  of  which  the  physical- 
force  Chartists  had  long  been  talking.  The  Chartists  ap- 
pear at  first  to  have  numbered  some  ten  thousand — twenty 


CHARTISM.  85 

thousand,  indeed,  according  to  other  accounts  —  and  they 
were  armed  with  guns, pikes, swords, pickaxes,  and  bludgeons. 
If  the  delay  and  misunderstanding  had  not  taken  place,  and 
they  had  arrived  at  their  rendezvous  at  the  appointed  time, 
the  attempt  might  have  led  to  very  calamitous  results.  The 
jury  found  Frost  and  two  of  his  companions,  Williams  and 
Jones,  guilty  of  high-treason,  and  they  were  sentenced  to 
death  ;  the  sentence,  however,  was  commuted  to  one  of  trans- 
portation for  life.  Even  this  was  afterward  relaxed,  and 
when  some  years  had  passed  away,  and  Chartism  had  ceased 
to  be  a  disturbing  influence,  Frost  was  allowed  to  return  to 
England,  where  he  found  that  a  new  generation  had  grown 
up,  and  that  he  was  all  but  forgotten.  In  the  mean  time  the 
Corn-law  agitation  had  been  successful;  the  year  of  revolu- 
tions had  passed  harmlessly  over;  Feargus  O'Connor's  day 
was  done. 

But  the  trial  and  conviction  of  Frost,  Williams,  and  Jones 
did  not  put  a  stop  to  the  Chartist  agitation.  On  the  con- 
trary, that  agitation  seemed  rather  to  wax  and  strengthen 
and  grow  broader  because  of  the  attempt  at  Newport  and 
its  consequences.  Thomas  Cooper,  for  example,  had  never 
attended  a  Chartist  meeting,  nor  known  anything  of  Char- 
tisru  beyond  what  he  read  in  the  newspapers,  until  after  the 
conviction  of  Frost  and  his  companions.  There  was  no  lack 
of  what  were  called  energetic  measures  on  the  part  of  the 
Government.  The  leading  Chartists  all  over  the  country 
were  prosecuted  and  tried,  literally  by  hundreds.  In  most 
cases  they  were  convicted  and  sentenced  to  terms  of  im- 
prisonment. The  imprisonment  served  rather  to  make  the 
Chartist  leaders  popular,  and  to  advertise  the  movement, 
than  to  accomplish  any  purpose  the  Government  had  at 
heart.  They  helped  to  make  the  Government  very  un- 
popular. The  working-classes  grew  more  and  more  bitter 
against  the  Whigs,  Avho,  they  said,  had  professed  Liberalism 
only  to  gain  their  own  ends,  and  were  really  at  heart  less 
Liberal  than  the  Tories.  Now  and  then  an  imprisoned  rep- 
resentative of  the  Chartist  movement  got  to  the  end  of  his 
period  of  sentence,  and  came  out  of  durance.  He  was  a  hero 
all. over  again,  and  his  return  to  public  life  was  the  signal 
for  fresh  demonstrations  of  Charlism.  At  the  general  elec- 
tion of  1841,  the  vast  majority  of  the  Chartists,  acting  on 


86  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  advice  of  some  of  their  more  extreme  leaders,  threw  all 
their  support  into  the  cause  of  the  Tories,  and  so  helped  the 
downfall  of  the  Melbourne  Administration. 

Wide  and  almost  universal  discontent  among  the  work- 
ing-classes in  town  and  country  still  helped  to  swell  the 
Chartist  ranks.  The  weavers  and  stockingers  in  some  of 
the  manufacturing  towns  were  miserably  poor.  Wages 
were  low  everywhere.  In  the  agricultural  districts  the 
complaints  against  the  operation  of  the  new  Poor  Law  were 
vehement  and  passionate;  and  although  they  were  unjust 
in  principle  and  sustained  by  monstrous  exaggerations  of 
statement,  they  were  not  the  less  potent  as  recruiting 
agents  for  Chartism.  There  was  a  profound  distrust  of  the 
middle  class  and  their  leaders.  The  Anti-Corn-law  agita- 
tion which  was  then  springing  up,  and  which,  one  might 
have  thought,  must  find  its  most  strenuous  support  among 
the  poor  artisans  of  the  towns,  was  regarded  with  deep  dis- 
gust by  some  of  the  Chartists,  and  with  downright  hostility 
by  others.  A  very  temperate  orator  of  the  Chartists  put 
the  feeling  of  himself  and  his  fellows  in  clear  terms.  "  We 
do  not  object  to  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws,"  he  said ;  "  on 
the  contrary,  when  we  get  the  Charter  we  will  repeal  the 
Corn  Laws  and  all  the  bad  laws.  But  if  you  give  up  your 
agitation  for  the  Charter  to  help  the  Free-traders,  they  will 
never  help  you  to  get  the  Charter.  Don't  be  deceived  by 
the  middle  classes  again !  You  helped  them  to  get  the  Re- 
form Bill, and  where  are  the  fine  promises  they  made  you? 
Don't  listen  to  their  humbug  any  more.  Stick  to  your 
Charter.  Without  your  votes  you  are  veritable  slaves." 
The  Chartists  believed  themselves  abandoned  by  their  nat- 
ural leaders.  All  manner  of  socialist  doctrines  began  to 
creep  in  among  them.  Wild  and  infidel  opinions  were  pro- 
claimed by  many.  Thomas  Cooper  tells  one  little  anecdote 
which  he  says  fairly  illustrates  the  feelings  of  many  of  the 
fiercer  spirits  among  the  artisan  Chartists  in  some  of  the 
towns.  He  and  his  friends  were  holding  a  meeting  one  day 
in  Leicester.  A  poor  religious  stockinger  said :  "  Let  us  be 
patient  a  little  longer;  surely  God  Almighty  will  help  us 
soon."  "Talk  to  us  no  more  about  thy  Goddle  Mighty," 
was  the  fierce  cry  that  came,  in  reply,  from  one  of  the  au- 
dience ;  "  there  isn't  one !  If  there  was  one,  he  wouldn't  let 


CHAKTISM.  87 

us  suffer  as  we  do !"  About  the  same  time  a  poor  stocking- 
er  rushed  into  Cooper's  house,  and  throwing  himself  wildly 
on  a  chair,  exclaimed, "  I  wish  they  would  hang  me  !  I  have 
lived  on  cold  potatoes  that  were  given  me  these  two  days, 
and  this  morning  I've  eaten  a  raw  potato  for  sheer  hunger. 
Give  me  a  bit  of  bread  and  a  cup  of  coffee,  or  I  shall  drop  !" 
Thomas  Cooper's  remark  about  this  time  is  very  intelligi- 
ble and  simple.  It  tells  a  long,  clear  story  about  Chartism. 
"  How  fierce,"  he  says,  "  my  discourses  became  now  in  the 
Market-place  on  Sunday  evenings !  My  heart  often  burned 
with  indignation  I  knew  not  how  to  express.  I  began,  from 
sheer  sympathy,  to  feel  a  tendency  to  glide  into  the  depraved 
thinking  of  some  of  the  stronger  but  coarser  spirits  among 
the  men." 

So  the  agitation  went  on.  We  need  not  follow  it  through 
all  its  incidents.  It  took  in  some  places  the  form  of  indus- 
trial strikes;  in  others,  of  socialistic  assemblages.  Its  fanat- 
icism had  in  many  instances  a  strong  flavor  of  nobleness  and 
virtue.  Some  men  under  the  influence  of  thoughtful  lead- 
ers pledged  themselves  to  total  abstinence  from  intoxicating 
drinks,  in  the  full  belief  that  the  agitation  would  never  suc- 
ceed until  the  working-classes  had  proved  themselves,  by 
their  self-control,  to  be  worthy  of  the  gift  of  freedom.  In 
other  instances,  as  has  been  already  remarked,  the  disap- 
pointment and  despair  of  the  people  took  the  form  of  infi- 
delity. There  were  many  riots  and  disturbances ;  none,  in- 
deed, of  so  seemingly  rebellious  a  nature  as  that  of  Frost 
and  his  companions,  but  many  serious  enough  to  spread 
great  alarm,  and  to  furnish  fresh  occasion  for  Government 
prosecutions  and  imprisonments.  Some  of  the  prisoners 
seem  to  have  been  really  treated  with  a  positively  wanton 
harshness  and  even  cruelty.  Thomas  Cooper's  account  of 
his  own  sufferings  in  prison  is  painful  to  read.  It  is  not 
easy  to  understand  what  good  purpose  any  Government 
could  have  supposed  the  prison  authorities  were  serving 
by  the  unnecessary  degradation  and  privation  of  men  who, 
whatever  their  errors,  were  conspicuously  and  transparently 
sincere  and  honest. 

It  is  clear  that  at  that  time  the  Chartists,  who  represented 
the  bulk  of  the  artisan  class  in  most  of  the  large  towns,  did 
in  their  very-hearts  believe  that  England  was  ruled  for  the 


88  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

benefit  of  aristocrats  and  millionnaires  who  were  absolutely 
indifferent  to  the  sufferings  of  the  poor.  It  is  equally  clear 
that  most  of  what  are  called  the  ruling  class  did  really  be- 
lieve the  English  working-men  who  joined  the  Chartist  move- 
ment to  be  a  race  of  fierce,  unmanageable,  and  selfish  com- 
munists who,  if  they  were  allowed  their  own  way  for  a 
moment,  would  prove  themselves  determined  to  overthrow 
throne,  altar,  and  all  established  securities  of  society.  An 
ignorant  panic  prevailed  on  both  sides.  England  was  in- 
deed divided  then,  as  Mr.  Disraeli's  novel  described  it,  into 
two  nations,  the  rich  and  the  poor,  in  towns  at  least ;  and 
each  hated  and  feared  the  other  with  all  that  unthinking 
hate  and  fear  which  hostile  nations  are  capable  of  showing 
even  amidst  all  the  influences  of  civilization. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

QUESTION   DE   JUPONS. 

MEANWHILE  things  were  looking  ill  with  the  Melbourne 
Ministry.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  addressing  great  meetings 
of  his  followers,  and  declaring  with  much  show  of  justice 
that  he  had  created  anew  the  Conservative  party.  The  po- 
sition of  the  Whigs  would  in  any  case  have  been  difficult. 
Their  mandate,  to  use  the  French  phrase,  seemed  to  be  ex- 
hausted. They  had  no  new  thing  to  propose.  They  came 
into  power  as  reformers,  and  now  they  had  nothing  to  offer 
in  the  way  of  reform.  It  may  be  taken  as  a  certainty  that 
in  English  politics  reaction  must  always  follow  advance. 
The  Whigs  must  just  then  have  come  in  for  the  effects  of 
reaction.  But  they  had  more  than  that  to  contend  with. 
In  our  own  time,  Mr.  Gladstone  had  no  sooner  passed  his 
great  measures  of  reform  than  he  began  to  experience  the 
effects  of  reaction.  But  there  was  a  great  difference  be- 
tween his  situation  and  that  of  the  Whigs  under  Melbourne. 
He  had  not  failed  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  his  followers. 
He  had  no  extreme  wing  of  his  party  clamoring  against  him 
on  the  ground  that  he  had  made  use  of  their  strength  to 
help  him  in  carrying  out  as  much  of  his  programme  as  suit- 
ed his  own  coterie,  and  that  he  had  then  deserted  them.  This 


,          QUESTION   DE  JUPONS.  89 

was  the  condition  of  the  Whigs.  The  more  advanced  Lib- 
erals and  the  whole  body  of  the  Chartists,  and  the  working- 
classes  generally,  detested  and  denounced  them.  Many  of 
the  Liberals  had  had  some  hope  while  Lord  Durham  still 
seemed  likely  to  be  a  political  power,  but  with  the  fading 
of  his  influence  they  lost  all  interest  in  the  Whig  Ministry. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  support  of  O'Connell  was  a  serious 
disadvantage  to  Melbourne  and  his  party  in  England. 

But  the  Whig  ministers  were  always  adding  by  some 
mistake  or  other  to  the  difficulties  of  their  position.  The 
Jamaica  Bill  put  them  in  great  perplexity.  This  was  a 
measure  brought  in  on  April  9th,  1839,  to  make  temporary 
provision  for  the  government  of  the  island  of  Jamaica,  by 
setting  aside  the  House  of  Assembly  for  five  years,  and  dur- 
ing that  time  empowering  the  governor  and  council  with 
three  salaried  commissioners  to  manage  the  affairs  of  the 
colony.  In  other  words,  the  Melbourne  Ministry  proposed 
to  suspend  for  five  years  the  constitution  of  Jamaica.  No 
body  of  persons  can  be  more  awkwardly  placed  than  a  Whig 
Ministry  proposing  to  set  aside  a  constitutional  government 
anywhere.  Such  a  proposal  may  be  a  necessary  measure ; 
it  may  be  unavoidable;  but  it  always  comes  with  a  bad 
grace  from  Whigs  or  Liberals,  and  gives  their  enemies  a 
handle  against  them  which  they  cannot  fail  to  use  to  some 
purpose.  What,  indeed,  it  may  be  plausibly  asked,  is  the 
raison  d'etre  of  a  Liberal  Government,  if  they  have  to  re- 
turn to  the  old  Tory  policy  of  suspended  constitutions  and 
absolute  law?  When  Rabagas,  become  minister,  tells  his 
master  that  the  only  way  to  silence  discontent  is  by  the  lit- 
eral use  of  the  cannon,  the  Prince  of  Monaco  remarks  very 
naturally  that  if  that  was  to  be  the  policy,  he  might  as  well 
have  kept  to  his  old  ministers  and  his  absolutism.  So  it  is 
with  an  English  Liberal  Ministry  advising  the  suspension 
of  constitutions. 

In  the  case  of  the  Jamaica  Bill  there  was  some  excuse  for 
the  harsh  policy.  After  the  abolition  of  slavery,  the  former 
masters  in  the  island  found  it  veiy  hard  to  reconcile  them- 
selves to  the  new  condition  of  things.  They  could  not  all 
at  once  understand  that  their  former  slaves  were  to  be  their 
equals  before  the  law.  As  we  have  seen  much  more  lately 
in  the  Southern  States  of  America,  after  the  civil  war  and 


90  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  emancipation  of  the  negroes,  there  was  still  a  pertina- 
cious attempt  made  by  the  planter  class  to  regain  in  sub- 
stance the  power  they  had  had  to  renounce  in  name.  This 
was  not  to  be  justified  or  excused;  but,  as  human  nature  is 
made,  it  was  not  unnatural.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the 
Jamaica  negroes  were  too  ignorant  to  understand  that  they 
had  acquired  any  rights;  others  were  a  little  too  clamor- 
ous in  their  assertion.  Many  a  planter  worked  his  men  and 
whipped  his  women  just  as  before  the  emancipation,  and 
the  victims  did  not  understand  that  they  had  any  right 
to  complain.  Many  negroes,  again,  were  ignorantly  and 
thoughtlessly  "  bumptious,"  to  use  a  vulgar  expression,  in 
the  assertion  of  their  newly-found  equality.  The  imperial 
governors  and  officials  were  generally  and  justly  eager  to 
protect  the  negroes ;  and  the  result  was  a  constant  quarrel 
between  the  Jamaica  House  of  Assembly  and  the  represent- 
atives of  the  home  Government.  The  Assembly  became 
more  insolent  and  offensive  every  day.  A  bill,  very  neces- 
sary in  itself,  was  passed  by  the  imperial  Parliament  for  the 
better  regulation  of  prisons  in  Jamaica,  and  the  House  of 
Assembly  refused  to  submit  to  any  such  legislation.  Under 
these  circumstances,  the  Melbourne  Ministry  proposed  the 
suspension  of  the  constitution  of  the  island.  The  measure 
was  opposed  not  only  by  Peel  and  the  Conservatives,  but 
by  many  Radicals.  It  was  argued  that  there  were  many 
courses  open  to  the  ministry  short  of  the  high-handed  pro- 
ceeding they  proposed;  and,  in  truth,  there  was  not  that 
confidence  in  the  Melbourne  Ministry  at  all  which  would 
have  enabled  them  to  obtain  from  Parliament  a  majority 
sufficient  to  carry  through  such,  a  policy.  The  ministry  was 
weak  and  discredited ;  anybody  might  now  throw  a  stone 
at  it.  They  only  had  a  majority  of  five  in  favor  of  their 
measure.  This,  of  course,  was  a  virtual  defeat.  The  minis- 
try acknowledged  it,  and  resigned.  Their  defeat  was  a  hu- 
miliation ;  their  resignation  an  inevitable  submission ;  but 
they  came  back  to  office  almost  immediately  under  condi- 
tions that  made  the  humiliation  more  humbling,  and  ren- 
dered their  subsequent  career  more  difficult  by  far  than 
their  past  struggle  for  existence  had  been. 

The  return  of  the  Whigs  to  office — for  they  cannot  be 
said  to  have  returned  to  power — came  about  in  a  very  odd 


QUESTION   DE  JUPONS.  91 

way.  Gulliver  ought  to  have  had  an  opportunity  of  telling 
such  a  story  to  the  king  of  the  Brobdingnagians,  in  order 
the  better  to  impress  him  with  a  clear  idea  of  the  logical 
beauty  of  constitutional  government.  It  was  an  entirely 
new  illustration  of  the  old  cherchez  la  femme  principle,  the 
femme  in  this  case,  however,  being  altogether  a  passive  and 
innocent  cause  of  trouble.  The  famous  controversy  known 
as  the  "  Bedchamber  Question  "  made  a  way  back  for  the 
Whigs  into  place.  When  Lord  Melbourne  resigned,  the 
Queen  sent  for  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  who  advised  her  to 
apply  to  Sir  Robert  Peel,  for  the  reason  that  the  chief  dif- 
ficulties of  a  Conservative  Government  would  be  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  Queen  sent  for  Peel,  and  when  he 
came,  told  him,  with  a  simple  and  girlish  frankness,  that  she 
was  sorry  to  have  to  part  with  her  late  ministers,  of  whose 
conduct  she  entirely  approved,  but  that  she  bowed  to  con- 
stitutional usage.  This  must  have  been  rather  an  astonish- 
ing beginning  to  the  grave  and  formal  Peel ;  but  he  was  not 
a  man  to  think  any  worse  of  the  candid  young  sovereign 
for  her  outspoken  ways.  The  negotiations  went  on  very 
smoothly  as  to  the  colleagues  Peel  meant  to  recommend  to 
her  Majesty,  until  he  happened  to  notice  the  composition  of 
the  royal  household  as  regarded  the  ladies  most  closely  in 
attendance  on  the  Queen.  For  example,  he  found  that  the 
wife  of  Lord  Normanby  and  the  sister  of  Lord  Morpeth 
were  the  two  ladies  in  closest  attendance  on  her  Majesty. 
Now  it  has  to  be  borne  in  mind — it  was  proclaimed  again 
and  again  during  the  negotiations — that  the  chief  difficulty 
of  the  Conservatives  would  necessarily  be  in  Ireland,  where 
their  policy  would  be  altogether  opposed  to  that  of  the 
Whigs.  Lord  Normanby  had  been  Lord-lieutenant  of  Ire- 
land under  the  Whigs,  and  Lord  Morpeth,  whom  we  can  all 
remember  as  the  amiable  and  accomplished  Lord  Carlisle  of 
later  time,  Irish  Secretary.  It  certainly  could  not  be  satis- 
factory for  Peel  to  try  to  work  a  new  Irish  policy  while  the 
closest  household  companions  of  the  Queen  were  the  wife 
and  sister  of  the  displaced  statesmen  who  directly  represent- 
ed the  policy  he  had  to  supersede.  Had  this  point  of  view 
been  made  clear  to  the  sovereign  at  first,  it  is  hardly  possi- 
ble that  any  serious  difficulty  could  have  arisen.  The  Queen 
must  have  seen  the  obvious  reasonableness  of  Peel's  request; 


92  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

nor  is  it  to  be  supposed  that  the  two  ladies  in  question  could 
have  desired  to  hold  their  places  under  such  circumstances. 
But  unluckily  some  misunderstanding  took  place  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  conversations  on  this  point.  Peel  only  de- 
sired to  press  for  the  retirement  of  the  ladies  holding  the 
higher  offices;  he  did  not  intend  to  ask  for  any  change  af- 
fecting a  place  lower  in  official  rank  than  that  of  lady  of  the 
bedchamber.  But  somehow  or  other  he  conveyed  to  the 
mind  of  the  Queen  a  different  idea.  She  thought  he  meant 
to  insist,  as  a  matter  of  principle,  upon  the  removal  of  all 
her  familiar  attendants  and  household  associates.  Under 
this  impression  she  consulted  Lord  John  Russell,  who  ad- 
vised her  on  what  he  understood  to  be  the  state  of  the  facts. 
On  his  advice,  the  Queen  stated  in  reply  that  she  could  not 
"  consent  to  a  course  which  she  conceives  to  be  contrary  to 
usage  and  is  repugnant  to  her  feelings."  Sir  Robert  Peel 
held  firm  to  his  stipulation  ;  and  the  chance  of  his  then  form- 
ing a  ministry  was  at  an  end.  Lord  Melbourne  and  his  col- 
leagues had  to  be  recalled ;  and  at  a  cabinet  meeting  they 
adopted  a  minute  declaring  it  reasonable  "  that  the  great 
offices  of  the  Court  and  situations  in  the  household  held  by 
members  of  Parliament  should  be  included  in  the  political 
arrangements  made  on  a  change  in  the  Administration  ;  but 
they  are  not  of  opinion  that  a  similar  principle  should  be 
applied  or  extended  to  the  offices  held  by  ladies  in  her  Maj- 
esty's household." 

The  matter  was  naturally  made  the  subject  of  explana- 
tion in  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was 
undoubtedly  right  in  his  view  of  the  question,  and  if  he  had 
been  clearly  understood  the  right  could  hardly  have  been 
disputed;  but  he  defended  his  position  in  language  of  what 
now  seems  rather  ludicrous  exaggeration.  He  treated  this 
question  de  jupons  as  if  it  were  of  the  last  importance  not 
alone  to  the  honor  of  the  ministry,  but  even  to  the  safety 
of  the  realm.  "  I  ask  you,"  he  said,  "  to  go  back  to  other 
times  :  take  Pitt  or  Fox,  or  any  other  minister  of  this  proud 
country,  and  answer  for  yourselves  the  question,  is  it  fitting 
that  one  man  shall  be  the  minister,  responsible  for  the  most 
arduous  charge  that  can  fall  to  the  lot  of  man,  and  that  the 
wife  of  the  other — that  other  his  most  formidable  political 
enemy — shall,  with  his  express  consent,  hold  office  in  imme- 


QUESTION   DE  JUPONS.  93 

diate  attendance  on  the  sovereign  ?"  "  Oh,  no  !"  he  ex- 
claimed, in  an  outburst  of  indignant  eloquence.  "I  felt 
that  it  was  impossible  ;  I  could  not  consent  to  this.  Feel- 
ings more  powerful  than  reasoning  told  me  that  it  was  not 
for  my  own  honor  or  for  the  public  interests  that  I  should 
consent  to  be  minister  of  England."  This  high-flown  Ian- 

o  o 

guage  seems  oddly  out  of  place  on  the  lips  of  a  statesman 
who,  of  all  his  contemporaries,  was  the  least  apt  to  indulge 
in  bursts  of  overwrought  sentiment.  Lord  Melbourne,  on 
the  other  hand,  defended  his  action  in  the  House  of  Lords 
in  language  of  equal  exaggeration.  "  I  resume  oifice,"  he 
said,  "unequivocally  and  solely  for  this  reason,  that  I  will 
not  desert  my  sovereign  in  a  situation  of  difficulty  and  dis- 
tress, especially  when  a  demand  is  made  upon  her  Majesty 
with  which  I  think  she  ought  not  to  comply — a  demand  in- 
consistent with  her  personal  honor,  and  which,  if  acquiesced 
in,  would  render  her  reign  liable  to  all  the  changes  and  va- 
riations of  political  parties,  and  make  her  domestic  life  one 
constant  scene  of  unhappiness  and  discomfort." 

In  the  country  the  incident  created  great  excitement. 
Some  Liberals  bluntly  insisted  that  it  was  not  right  in  such 
a  matter  to  consult  the  feelings  of  the  sovereign  at  all,  and 
that  the  advice  of  the  minister,  and  his  idea  of  what  was  for 
the  good  of  the  country,  ought  alone  to  be  considered.  On 
the  other  hand,  O'Connell  burst  into  impassioned  language 
of  praise  and  delight,  as  he  dwelt  upon  the  decision  of  the 
Queen,  and  called  upon  the  Powers  above  to  bless  "the 
young  creature — that  creature  of  only  nineteen,  as  pure  as 
she  is  exalted,"  who  consulted  not  her  head,  but  "  the  ovei!- 
flowing  feelings  of  her  young  heart."  "Those  excellent 
women  who  had  been  so  long  attached  to  her,  who  had 
nursed  and  tended  to  her  wants  in  her  childhood,  who  had 
watched  over  her  in  her  sickness,  whose  eyes  beamed  with 
delight  as  they  saw  her  increasing  daily  in  beauty  and  in 
loveliness — when  they  were  threatened  to  be  forced  away 
from  her — her  heart  told  her  that  she  could  as  well  part 
with  that  heart  itself  as  with  those  whom  it  held  so  dear." 
Feargns  O'Connor  went  a  good  deal  farther,  however,  when 
he  boldly  declared  that  he  had  excellent  authority  for  the 
statement  that  if  the  Tories  had  got  the  young  Queen  into 
their  hands  by  the  agency  of  the  new  ladies  of  the  bed- 


94  A  HISTORY   OF   OUB  OWN  TIMES. 

chamber,  they  had  a  plan  for  putting  her  out  of  the  way 
and  placing  "the  bloody  Cumberland"  on  the  throne  in  her 
stead.  In  O'ConnelPs  case,  no  mystery  was  made  of  the 
fact  that  he  believed  the  ladies  actually  surrounding  the 
young  Queen  to  be  friendly  to  what  he  considered  the  cause 
of  Ireland ;  and  that  he  was  satisfied  Peel  and  the  Tories 
were  against  it.  For  the  wild  talk  represented  by  the 
words  of  Feargus  O'Connor,  it  is  only  necessary  to  say  that, 
frenzied  and  foolish  as  it  must  seem  now  to  us,  and  as  it 
must  even  then  have  seemed  to  all  rational  beings,  it  had 
the  firm  acceptance  of  large  masses  of  people  throughout 
the  country,  who  persisted  in  seeing  in  Peel's  pleadings  for 
the  change  of  the  bedchamber  women  the  positive  evidence 
of  an  unscrupulous  Tory  plot  to  get  possession  of  the  Queen's 
person,  not  indeed  for  the  purpose  of  violently  altering  the 
succession,  but  in  the  hope  of  poisoning  her  mind  against  all 
Liberal  opinions. 

Lord  Brougham  was  not  likely  to  lose  so  good  an  oppor- 
tunity of  attacking  Lord  Melbourne  and  his  colleagues.  He 
insisted  that  Lord  Melbourne  had  sacrificed  Liberal  princi- 
ples and  the  interests  of  the  country  to  the  private  feelings 
of  the  sovereign.  "  I  thought,"  he  declared,  in  a  burst  of 
eloquent  passion, "  that  we  belonged  to  a  country  in  which 
the  government  by  the  Crown  and  the  wisdom  of  Parlia- 
ment was  everything,  and  the  personal  feelings  of  the  sov- 
ereign were  absolutely  not  to  be  named  at  the  same  time. 
•  '  •  I  little  thought  to  have  lived  to  hear  it  said  by  the 
Whigs  of  1839,  'Let  us  rally  round  the  Queen;  never 
mind  the  House  of  Commons;  never  mind  measures;  throw 
principles  to  the  dogs ;  leave  pledges  unredeemed ;  but  for 
God's  sake  rally  round  the  throne.'  Little  did  I  think  the 
day  would  come  when  I  should  hear  such  language,  not 
from  the  unconstitutional,  place-hunting,  king-loving  Tories, 
who  thought  the  public  was  made  for  the  king,  not  the  king 
for  the  public,  but  from  the  Whigs  themselves !  The  Ja- 
maica Bill,  said  to  be  a  most  important  measure,  had  been 
brought  forward.  The  Government  staked  their  existence 
upon  it.  They  were  not  able  to  carry  it;  they  therefore 
conceived  they  had  lost  the  confidence  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. They  thought  it  a  measure  of  paramount  necessity 
then.  Is  it  less  necessary  now?  Oh,  but  that  is  altered !  The 


QUESTION  DE  JUPONS.  95 

Jamaica  question  is  to  be  new-fashioned;  principles  are  to  be 
given  up,  and  all  because  of  two  ladies  of  the  bedchamber." 
Nothing  could  be  more  undesirable  than  the  position  in 
which  Lord  Melbourne  and  his  colleagues  had  allowed  the 
sovereign  to  place  herself.  The  more  people  in  general 
came  to  think  over  the  matter,  the  more  clearly  it  was  seen 
that  Peel  was  in  the  right,  although  he  had  not  made  him- 
self understood  at  first,  and  had,  perhaps,  not  shown  all 
through  enough  of  consideration  for  the  novelty  of  the 
young  sovereign's  position,  or  for  the  difficulty  of  finding 
a  conclusive  precedent  on  such  a  question,  seeing  that  since 
the  principle  of  ministerial  responsibility  had  come  to  be 
recognized  among  us  in  its  genuine  sense,  there  never  before 
had  been  a  woman  on  the  throne.  But  no  one  could  de- 
liberately maintain  the  position  at  first  taken  up  by  the 
Whigs ;  and,  in  point  of  fact,  they  were  soon  glad  to  drop 
it  as  quickly  and  quietly  as  possible.  The  whole  question, 
it  may  be  said  at  once,  was  afterward  settled  by  a  sensi- 
ble compromise  which  the  Prince  Consort  suggested.  It 
was  agreed  that  on  a  change  of  ministry  the  Queen  would 
listen  to  any  representation  from  the  incoming  Prime-min- 
ister as  to  the  composition  of  her  household,  and  would  ar- 
range.for  the  retirement,  "of  their  own  accord,"  of  any  la- 
dies who  were  so  closely  related  to  the  leaders  "of  Opposi- 
tion as  to  render  their  presence  inconvenient.  The  Whigs 
came  back  to  office  utterly  discredited.  They  had  to  tinker 
up  somehow  a  new  Jamaica  Bill.  They  had  declared  that 
they  could  not  remain  in  office  unless  they  were  allowed 
to  deal  in  a  certain  way  with  Jamaica;  and  now  that  they 
were  back  again  in  office,  they  could  not  avoid  trying  to  do 
something  with  the  Jamaica  business.  They,  therefore,  in- 
troduced a  new  bill,  which  was  a  mere  compromise  put  to- 
gether in  the  hope  of  its  being  allowed  to  pass.  It  was  al- 
lowed to  pass,  after  a  fashion ;  that  is,  when  the  Opposition 
in  the  House  of  Lords  had  tinkered  it  and  amended  it  at 
their  pleasure.  The  bedchamber  question,  in  fact,  had  thrown 
Jamaica  out  of  perspective.  The  unfortunate  island  must 
do  the  best  it  could  now;  in  this  country  statesmen  had 
graver  matter  to  think  of.  Sir  Robert  Peel  could  not  gov- 
ern with  Lady  Normanby ;  the  Whigs  would  not  govern 
Avithout  her. 


96  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

It  does  not  seem  by  any  means  clear,  however,  that  Lord 
Melbourne  and  his  colleagues  deserved  the  savage  censure 

o  o 

of  Lord  Brougham  merely  for  having  returned  to  office  and 
given  up  their  original  position  with  regard  to  the  Jamaica 
Bill.  What  else  remained  to  be  done?  If  they  had  refused 
to  come  back,  the  only  result  would  have  been  that  Peel 
must  have  become  Prime-minister,  with  a  distinct  minority 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  Peel  could  not  have  held  his 
ground  there,  except  by  the  favor  and  mercy  of  his  oppo- 
nents; and  those  were  not  merciful  days  in  politics.  He 
would  only  have  taken  office  to  be  called  upon  at  once  to 
resign  it  by  some  adverse  vote  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
The  state  of  things  seems,  in  this  respect,  to  be  not  unlike 
that  which  existed  when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  defeated  on  the 
Irish  University  Bill  in  1873.  Mr.  Gladstone  resigned,  or 
rather  tendered  his  resignation;  and  by  his  advice  her  Maj- 
esty invited  Mr.  Disraeli  to  form  a  cabinet.  Mr.  Disraeli  did 
not  see  his  way  to  undertake  the  government  of  the  country 
with  the  existing  House  of  Commons ;  and  as  the  conditions 
under  which  he  was  willing  to  undertake  the  duty  were  not 
conveniently  attainable,  the  negotiation  came  to  an  end. 
The  Queen  sent  again  for  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  consented  to 
resume  his  place  as  Prime-minister.  If  Lord  Melbourne  re- 
turned to  office  with  the  knowledge  that  he  could  not  carry 
the  Jamaica  Bill,  which  he  had  declared  to  be  necessary,  Mr. 
Gladstone  resumed  his  place  at  the  head  of  his  ministry  with- 
out the  remotest  hope  of  being  able  to  carry  his  Irish  Uni- 
versity measure.  No  one  ever  found  fault  with  Mr.  Glad- 
stone for  having,  under  the  circumstances,  done  the  best  he 
could,  and  consented  to  meet  the  request  of  the  sovereign 
and  the  convenience  of  the  public  service  by  again  taking  on 
himself  the  responsibility  of  government,  although  the  meas- 
ure on  which  he  had  declared  he  would  stake  the  existence 
of  his  ministry  had  been  rejected  by  the  House  of  Commons. 
Still,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  Melbourne  Government 
were  prejudiced  in  the  public  mind  by  these  events,  and  by 
the  attacks  for  which  they  gave  so  large  an  opportunity. 
The  feeling  in  some  parts  of  the  country  was  still  sentimen- 
tally with  the  Queen.  At  many  a  dinner-table  it  became  the 
fashion  to  drink  the  health  of  her  Majesty  with  a  punning 
addition,  not  belonging  to  an  order  of  wit  any  higher  than 


QUESTION   DE  JUPONS.  97 

that  which  in  other  days  toasted  the  King  "  over  the  water;" 
or  prayed  of  heaven  to  "  send  this  crumb  well  down."  The 
Queen  was  toasted  as  the  sovereign  of  spirit  who  "  would 
not  let  her  belles  be  peeled."  But  the  ministry  were  almost 
universally  believed  to  have  placed  themselves  in  a  ridicu- 
lous light,  and  to  have  crept  again  into  office,  as  an  able 
writer  puts  it,  "behind  the  petticoats  of  the  ladies  in  wait- 
ing." The  death  of  Lady  Flora  Hastings,  which  occurred 
almost  immediately,  tended  further  to  arouse  a  feeling  of 
dislike  to  the  Whigs.  This  melancholy  event  does  not  need 
any  lengthened  comment.  A  young  lady  who  belonged  to 
the  household  of  the  Duchess  of  Kent  fell  under  an  unfound- 
ed, but,  in  the  circumstances,  not  wholly  unreasonable,  sus- 
picion. It  was  the  classic  story  of  Calisto,  Diana's  unhappy 
nymph, reversed.  Lady  Flora  was  proved  to  be  innocent; 
but  her  death,  imminent  probably  in  any  case  from  the  dis- 
ease which  had  fastened  on  her,  was  doubtless  hastened  by 
the  humiliation  to  which  she  had  been  subjected.  It  does 
not  seem  that  any  one  was  to  blame  in  the  matter.  The 
ministry  certainly  do  not  appear  to  have  done  anything 
for  which  they  could  fairly  be  reproached.  No  one  can 
be  surprised  that  those  who  surrounded  the  Queen  and  the 
Duchess  of  Kent  should  have  taken  some  pains  to  inquire 
into  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  scandalous  rumors,  for  which 
there  might  have  appeared  to  be  some  obvious  justification. 
But  the  whole  story  was  so  sad  and  shocking ;  the  death  of 
the  poor  young  lady  followed  with  such  tragic  rapidity  upon 
the  establishment  of  her  innocence;  the  natural  complaints 
of  her  mother  were  so  loud  and  impassioned,  that  the  minis- 
ters who  had  to  answer  the  mother's  appfeals  were  unavoid- 
ably placed  in  an  invidious  and  a  painful  position.  The  de- 
mands of  the  Marchioness  of  Hastings  for  redress  were  un- 
reasonable. They  endeavored  to  make  out  the  existence  of 
a  cruel  conspiracy  against  Lady  Flora,  and  called  for  the 
peremptory  dismissal  and  disgrace  of  the  eminent  court  phy- 
sician, who  had  merely  performed  a  most  painful  duty,  and 
whose  report  had  been  the  especial  means  of  establishing  the 
injustice  of  the  suspicions  which  were  directed  against  her. 
But  it  was  a  damaging  duty  for  a  minister  to  have  to  write 
to  the  distracted  mother,  as  Lord  Melbourne  found  it  nec- 
essary to  do,  telling  her  that  her  demand  was  "  so  unprece- 
I.— 5 


A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

dented  and  objectionable,  that  even  the  respect  due  to  your 
ladyship's  sex,  rank,  family,  and  character  would  not  justify 
me  in  more,  if,  indeed,  it  authorizes  so  much,  than  acknowl- 
edging that  letter  for  the  sole  purpose  of  acquainting  your 
ladyship  that  I  have  received  it."  The  "Palace  scandal," 
as  it  was  called,  became  known  shortly  before  the  dispute 
about  the  ladies  of  the  bedchamber.  The  death  of  Lady 
Flora  Hastings  happened  soon  after  it.  It  is  not  strictly  in 
logical  propriety  that  such  events,  or  their  rapid  succession, 
should  tend  to  bring  into  disrepute  the  ministry,  who  can 
only  be  regarded  as  their  historical  contemporaries.  But 
the  world  must  change  a  great  deal  before  ministers  are  no 
longer  held  accountable  in  public  opinion  for  anything  but 
the  events  over  which  they  can  be  shown  to  have  some 
control. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE. 

ON  January  16th,  1840,  the  Queen,  opening  Parliament  in 
person,  announced  her  intention  to  marry  her  cousin,  Prince 
Albert  of  Saxe-Goburg-Gotha  —  a  step  which  she  trusted 
would  be  "conducive  to  the  interests  of  my  people  as  well 
as  to- my  own  domestic  happiness."  In  the  discussion  which 
followed  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Sir  Robert  Peel  ob- 
served that  her  Majesty  had  "  the  singular  good  fortune  to 
be  able  to  gratify  her  private  feelings,  while  she  performs 
her  public  duty,  and  to  obtain  the  best  guarantee  for  happi- 
ness by  contracting  an  alliance  founded  on  affection."  Peel 
spoke  the  simple  truth  ;  it  was,  indeed,  a  marriage  founded 
on  affection.  No  marriage  contracted  in  the  humblest  class 
could  have  been  more  entirely  a  union  of  love,  and  more 
free  from  what  might  be  called  selfish  and  worldly  considera- 
tions. The  Queen  had  for  a  long  time  loved  her  cousin.  He 
was  nearly  her  own  age,  the  Queen  being  the  elder  by  three 
months  and  two  or  three  days.  Francis  Charles  Augustus 
Albert  Emmanuel  was  the  full  name  of  the  young  Prince. 
He  was  the  second  son  of  Ernest,  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg- 
Saalfeld,  and  of  his  wife  Louisa,  daughter  of  Augustus,  Duke 
of  Saxe-Gotha-Altenbenr.  Prince  Albert  was  born  at  the 


THE   QUEEN'S   MARRIAGE.  99 

Rosenau,  one  of  his  father's  residences,  near  Coburg,  on  Au- 
gust 26th,  1J319.  The  court  historian  notices  with  pardon- 
able complacency  the  "  remarkable  coincidence  " — easily  ex- 
plained, surely — that  the  same  accoucheuse,  Madame  Siebold, 
assisted  at  the  birth  of  Prince  Albert,  and  of  the  Queen  some 
three  months  before,  and  that  the  Prince  was  baptized  by 
the  clergyman,  Professor  Genzler,  who  had  the  year  before 
officiated  at  the  marriage  of  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Kent. 
A  marriage  between  the  Princess  Victoria  and  Prince  Albert 
had  been  thought  of  as  desirable  among  the  families  on  both 
sides,  but  it  was  always  wisely  resolved  that  nothing  should 
be  said  to  the  young  Princess  on  the  subject  unless  she  her- 
self showed  a  distinct  liking  for  her  cousin.  In  1836  Prince 
Albert  was  brought  by  his  father  to  England,  and  made  the 
personal  acquaintance  of  the  Princess,  and  she  seems  at  once 
to  have  been  drawn  toward  him  in  the  manner  which  her 
family  and  friends  would  most  have  desired.  Three  years 
later  the  Prince  again  came  to  England,  and  the  Queen,  in  a 
letter  to  her  uncle,  the  King  of  the  Belgians,  wrote  of  him 
in  the  warmest  terms.  "Albert's  beauty,"  she  said,  "is 
most  striking,  and  he  is  most  amiable  and  unaffected — in 
short,  very  fascinating."  Not  many  days  after  she  wrote  to 
another  friend  and  faithful  counsellor,  the  Baron  Stockmar, 
to  say,  "I  do  feel  so  guilty  I  know  not  how  to  begin  my  let- 
ter; but  I  think  the  news  it  will  contain  will  be  sufficient 
to  insure  your  forgiveness.  Albert  has  completely  won  my 
heart,  and  all  was  settled  between  us  this  morning."  The 
Queen  had  just  before  informed  Lord  Melbourne  of  her  in- 
tention, and  Lord  Melbourne,  it  is  needless  to  say,  expressed 
his  decided  approval.  There  was  no  one  to  disapprove  of 
such  a  marriage. 

Prince  Albert  was  a  young  man  to  win  the  heart  of  any 
girl.  He  was  singularly  handsome,  graceful,  and  gifted. 
In  princes,  as  we  know,  a  small  measure  of  beauty  and  ac- 
complishment suffices  to  throw  courtiers  and  court  ladies 
into  transports  of  admiration ;  but  had  Prince  Albert  been 
the  son  of  a  farmer  or  a  butler,  he  must  have  been  admired 
for  his  singular  personal  attractions.  He  had  had  a  sound 
and  a  varied  education.  He  had  been  brought  up  as  if  he 
were  to  be  a  professional  musician,  a  professional  chemist  or 
botanist,  and  a  professor  of  history  and  belles-lettres  and  the 


100  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

fine  arts.  The  scientific  and  the  literary  were  remarkably 
blended  in  his  bringing-up ;  remarkably,  that  is  to  say,  for 
some  half-century  ago,  when  even  in  Germany  a  system  of 
education  seldom  aimed  at  being  totus,  teres  atque  rotundus. 
He  had  begun  to  study  the  constitutional  history  of  States, 
and  was  preparing  himself  to  take  an  interest  in  politics. 
There  was  much  of  the  practical  and  business-like  about  him, 
as  he  showed  in  after-life ;  he  loved  farming,  and  took  a  deep 
interest  in  machinery  and  in  the  growth  of  industrial  science. 
He  was  a  sort  of  combination  of  the  troubadour,  the  savant, 
and  the  man  of  business.  His  tastes  were  for  a  quiet,  domes- 
tic, and  unostentatious  life — a  life  of  refined  culture,  of  happy, 
calm  evenings,  of  art  and  poetry  and  genial  communion  with 
Nature.  He  was  made  happy  by  the  songs  of  birds,  and  de- 
lighted in  sitting  alone  and  playing  the  organ.  But  there 
was  in  him,  too,  a  great  deal  of  the  political  philosopher. 
He  loved  to  hear  political  and  other  questions  well  argued 
out,  and  once  observed  that  a  false  argument  jarred  on  his 
nerves  as  much  as  a  false  note  in  music.  He  seems  to  have 
had  from  his  youth  an  all-pervading  sense  of  duty.  So  far 
as  we  can  guess,  he  was  almost  absolutely  free  from  the 
ordinary  follies,  not  to  say  sins,  of  youth.  Young  as  he  was 
when  he  married  the  Queen,  he  devoted  himself  at  once  to 
what  he  conscientiously  believed  to  be  the  duties  of  his  sta- 
tion with  a  self-control  and  self-devotion  rare  even  among 
the  aged,  and  almost  unknown  in  youth.  He  gave  up  every 
habit,  however  familiar  and  dear,  every  predilection,  no  mat- 
ter how  sweet,  every  indulgence  of  sentiment  or  amusement 
that  in  any  way  threatened  to  interfere  with  the  steadfast 
performance  of  the  part  he  had  assigned  to  himself.  No 
man  ever  devoted  himself  more  faithfully  to  the  difficult 
duties  of  a  high  and  a  new  situation,  or  kept  more  strictly 
to  his  resolve.  It  was  no  task  to  him  to  be  a  tender  hus- 
band and  a  loving  father.  This  was  a  part  of  his  sweet, 
pure,  and  affectionate  nature.  It  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  any  other  queen  ever  had  a  married  life  so  happy 
as  that  of  Queen  Victoria. 

The  marriage  of  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  took  place  on 
February  10th,  1840.  The  reception  given  by  the  people  in 
general  to  the  Prince  on  his  landing  in  England  a  few  days 
before  the  ceremony,  and  on  the  day  of  the  marriage,  was 


THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE.  101 

cordial,  and  even  enthusiastic.  But  it  is  not  certain  whether 
there  was  a  very  cordial  feeling  to  the  Prince  among  all 
classes  of  politicians.  A  rumor  of  the  most  absurd  kind 
had  got  abroad  in  certain  circles  that  the  young  Albert  was 
not  a  Protestant — that  he  was,  in  fact,  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  In  a  different  circle  the  belief  was  curi- 
ously cherished  that  the  Prince  was  a  free-thinker  in  mat- 
ters of  religion,  and  a  radical  in  politics.  Somewhat  unfort- 
unately, the  declaration  of  the  intended  marriage  to  the 
privy  council  did  not  mention  the  fact  that  Albert  was  a 
Protestant  Prince.  The  cabinet  no  doubt  thought  that  the 
leaders  of  public  opinion  on  all  sides  of  politics  would  have 
had  historical  knowledge  among  them  to  teach  them  that 
Prince  Albert  belonged  to  that  branch  of  the  Saxon  family 
which  since  the  Reformation  had  been  conspicuously  Prot- 
estant. "There  has  not,"  Prince  Albert  himself  wrote  to 
the  Queen  on  December  7th,  1839,  "been  a  single  Catholic 
princess  introduced  into  the  Coburg  family  since  the  appear- 
ance of  Luther  in  1521.  Moreover,  the  Elector  Frederick 
the  Wise  of  Saxony  was  the  very  first  Protestant  that  ever 
lived."  No  doubt  the  ministry  thought  also  that  the  con- 
stitutional rule  which  forbids  an  English  sovereign  to  mar- 
ry with  a  Roman  Catholic  under  penalty  of  forfeiting  the 
crown,  would  be  regarded  as  a  sufficient  guarantee  that 
when  they  announced  the  Queen's  approaching  marriage  it 
must  be  a  marriage  with  a  Protestant.  All  this  assumption, 
however  reasonable  and  natural,  did  not  find  warrant  in  the 
events  that  actually  took  place.  It  would  have  been  better, 
of  course,  if  the  Government  had  assuined  that  Parliament 
and  the  public  generally  knew  nothing  about  the  Prince  and 
his  ancestry,  or  the  constitutional  penalties  for  a  member  of 
the  Royal  Family  marrying  a  Catholic,  and  had  formally 
announced  that  the  choice  of  Queen  Victoria  had  happily 
fallen  on  a  Protestant.  The  wise  and  foreseeing  Leopold, 
King  of  the  Belgians,  had  recommended  that  the  fact  should 
be  specifically  mentioned ;  but  it  was,  perhaps,  a  part  of  Lord 
Melbourne's  indolent  good-nature  to  take  it  for  granted  that 
people  generally  would  be  cairn  and  reasonable,  and  that  all 
would  go  right  without  interruption  or  cavil.  He  therefore 
acted  on  the  assumption  that  any  formal  mention  of  Prince 
Albert's  Protestantism  would  be  superfluous;  and  neither 


102  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

in  the  declaration  to  the  privy  council  nor  in  the  announce- 
ment to  Parliament  was  a  word  said  upon  the  subject.  The 
result  was  that  in  the  debate  on  the  address  in  the  House 
of  Lords  a  somewhat  unseemly  altercation  took  place,  an  al- 
tercation the  more  to  be  regretted  because  it  might  have 
been  so  easily  spared.  The  question  was  bluntly  raised  by 
no  less  a  person  than  the  Duke  of  Wellington  whether  the 
future  husband  of  the  Queen  was  or  was  not  a  Protestant. 
The  Duke  actually  charged  the  ministry  with  having  pur- 
posely left  out  the  word  "Protestant"  in  the  announce- 
ments, in  order  that  they  might  not  offend  their  Irish  and 
Catholic  supporters,  and  by  the  very  charge  did  much  to 
strengthen  the  popular  feeling  against  the  statesmen  who 
were  supposed  to  be  kept  in  office  by  virtue  of  the  patron- 
age of  O'Connell.  The  Duke  moved  that  the  word  "Prot- 

o 

estant"  be  inserted  in  the  congratulatory  address  to  the 
Queen,  and  he  carried  his  point,  although  Lord  Melbourne 
held  to  the  opinion  that  the  word  was  unnecessary  in  de- 
scribing a  Prince  who  was  not  only  a  Protestant,  but  de- 
scended from  the  most  Protestant  family  in  Europe.  The 
lack  of  judgment  and  tact  on  the  part  of  the  ministry  was 
never  more  clearly  shown  than  in  the  original  omission  of 
the  word. 

Another  disagreeable  occurrence  was  the  discussion  that 
took  place  when  the  bill  for  the  naturalization  of  the  Prince 
was  brought  before  the  House  of  Lords.  The  bill  in  its  title 
merely  set  out  the  proposal  to  provide  for  the  naturalization 
of  the  Prince ;  but  it  contained  a  clause  to  give  him  prece- 
dence for  life  "next  after  her  Majesty, in  Parliament  or  else- 
where, as  her  Majesty  might  think  proper."  A  great  deal 
of  objection  was  raised  by  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Lord 
Brougham  to  this  clause  on  its  own  merits ;  but,  as  was  nat- 
ural, the  objections  were  infinitely  aggravated  by  the  singu- 
lar want  of  judgment,  and  even  of  common  propriety,  which 
could  introduce  a  clause  conferring  on  the  sovereign  powers 
so  large  and  so  new  into  a  mere  naturalization  bill,  without 
any  previous  notice  to  Parliament.  The  matter  Avas  ulti- 
mately settled  by  allowing  the  bill  to  remain  a  simple  nat- 
uralization measure,  and  leaving  the  question  of  precedence 
to  be  dealt  with  by  Royal  prerogative.  Both  the  great  po- 
litical parties  concurred,  without  further  difficulty,  in  an  ar- 


THE   QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE.  103 

rangement  by  which  it  was  provided  in  letters-patent  that 
the  Prince  should  thenceforth  upon  all  occasions,  and  in  all 
meetings,  except  when  otherwise  provided  by  Act  of  Par- 
liament, have  precedence  next  to  the  Queen.  There  never 
would  have  been  any  difficulty  in  the  matter  if  the  ministry 
had  acted  with  any  discretion ;  but  it  would  be  absurd  to 
expect  that  a  great  nation,  whose  constitutional  system  is 
built  up  of  precedents,  should  agree  at  once  and  without  de- 
mur to  every  new  arrangement  which  it  might  seem  conven- 
ient to  a  ministry  to  make  in  a  hurry.  Yet  another  source 
of  dissatisfaction  to  the  palace  and  the  people  was  created 
by  the  manner  in  which  the  ministry  took  upon  themselves 
to  bring  forward  the  proposition  for  the  settlement  of  an 
annuity  on  the  Prince.  In  former  cases  —  that,  for  exam- 
ple, of  Queen  Charlotte,  Queen  Adelaide,  and  Prince  Leopold 
on  his  marriage  with  the  Princess  Charlotte — the  annuity 
granted  had  been  £50,000.  It  so  happened,  however,  that 
the  settlement  to  be  made  on  Prince  Albert  came  in  times 
of  great  industrial  and  commercial  distress.  The  days  had 
gone  by  when  economy  in  the  House  of  Commons  was  looked 
upon  as  an  ignoble  principle,  and  when  loyalty  to  the  sover- 
eign was  believed  to  bind  members  of  Parliament  to  grant, 
Avithout  a  murmur  of  discussion,  any  sums  that  might  be 
asked  by  the  minister  in  the  sovereign's  name.  Parliament 
was  beginning  to  feel  more  thoroughly  its  responsibility  as 
the  guardian  of  the  nation's  resources,  and  it  was  no  longer 
thought  a  fine  thing  to  give  away  the  money  of  the  tax-pay- 
er with  magnanimous  indifference.  It  was,  therefore,  absurd 
on  the  part  of  the  ministry  to  suppose 'that  because  great 
sums  of  money  had  been  voted  without  question  on  former 
occasions,  they  would  be  voted  without  question  now.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  the  whole  matter  might  have  been  set- 
tled without  controversy  if  the  ministry  had  shown  any 
judgment  whatever  in  their  conduct  of  the  business.  In 
our  day  the  ministry  would  at  once  have  consulted  the  lead- 
ers of  the  Opposition.  In  all  matters  where  the  grant  of 
money  to  any  one  connected  with  the  sovereign  is  concern- 
ed, it  is  now  understood  that  the  gift  shall  come  with  the 
full  concurrence  of  both  parties  in  Parliament.  The  leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons  would  probably,  by  arrangement, 
propose  the  grant,  and  the  leader  of  the  Opposition  would 


104  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

second  it.  In  the  case  of  the  annuity  to  Prince  Albert,  the 
ministry  had  the  almost  incredible  folly  to  bring  forward 
their  proposal  without  having  invited  in  any  way  the  con- 
currence of  the  Opposition.  They  introduced  the  proposal 
without  discretion;  they  conducted  the  discussion  on  it 
without  temper.  They  answered  the  most  reasonable  objec- 
tions with  imputations  of  want  of  loyalty ;  and  they  gave 
some  excuse  for  the  suspicion  that  they  wished  to  provoke 
the  Opposition  into  some  expression  that  might  make  them 
odious  to  the  Queen  and  the  Prince.  Mr.  Hume,  the  econo- 
mist, proposed  that  the  annuity  be  reduced  from  .£50,000  to 
£21,000.  This  was  negatived.  Thereupon  Colonel  Sibthorp, 
a  once  famous  Tory  fanatic  of  the  most  eccentric  manners 
and  opinions,  proposed  that  the  sum  be  £30,000,  and  he  re- 
ceived the  support  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  other  eminent 
members  of  the  Opposition;  and  the  amendment  was  carried. 

These  were  not  auspicious  incidents  to  prelude  the  Royal 
marriage.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  for  a  time  the  Queen, 
still  more  than  the  Prince,  felt  their  influence  keenly.  The 
Prince  showed  remarkable  good -sense  and  appreciation  of 
the  condition  of  political  arrangements  in  England,  and  read- 
ily comprehended  that  there  was  nothing  personal  to  him- 
self in  any  objections  which  the  House  of  Commons  might 
have  made  to  the  proposals  of  the  ministry.  The  question 
of  precedence  was  very  easily  settled  when  it  came  to  be 
discussed  in  reasonable  fashion ;  although  it  was  not  until 
many  years  after  (1857)  that  the  title  of  Prince  Consort  was 
given  to  the  husband  of  the  Queen. 

A  few  months  after  the  marriage,  a  bill  was  passed  provid- 
ing for  a  regency  in  the  possible  event  of  the  death  of  the 
Queen,  leaving  issue.  With  the  entire  concurrence  of  the  lead- 
ers of  the  Opposition,  who  were  consulted  this  time,  Prince 
Albert  was  named  Regent,  following  the  precedent  which  had 
been  adopted  in  the  instance  of  the  Princess  Charlotte  and 
Prince  Leopold.  The  Duke  of  Sussex,  uncle  of  the  Queen, 
alone  dissented  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  recorded  his  pro- 
test against  the  proposal.  The  passing  of  this  bill  was  nat- 
urally regarded  as  of  much  importance  to  Prince  Albert.  It 
gave  him  to  some  extent  the  status  in  the  country  which  he 
had  not  had  before.  It  also  proved  that  the  Prince  him- 
self had  risen  in  the  estimation  of  the  Tory  party  during  the 


THE  QUEEN'S  MAKRIAGE.        105 

few  months  that  elapsed  since  the  debates  on  the  annuity 
and  the  question  of  precedence.  No  one  could  have  started 
with  a  more  resolute  determination  to  stand  clear  of  party 
politics  than  Prince  Albert.  He  accepted  at  once  his  posi- 
tion as  the  husband  of  the  Queen  of  a  constitutional  coun- 
try. His  own  idea  of  his  duty  was  that  he  should  be  the 
private  secretary  and  unofficial  counsellor  of  the  Queen. 
To  this  purpose  he  devoted  himself  unswervingly.  Outside 
that  part  of  his  duties,  he  constituted  himself  a  sort  of  min- 
ister without  portfolio  of  art  and  education.  He  took  an 
interest,  and  often  a  leading  part,  in  all  projects  and  move- 
ments relating  to  the  spread  of  education,  the  culture  of  art, 
and  the  promotion  of  industrial  science.  Yet  it  was  long 
before  he  was  thoroughly  understood  by  the  country.  It 
was  long  before  he  became  in  any  degree  popular;  and  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  he  ever  was  thoroughly  and  gen- 
erally popular.  Not,  perhaps,  until  his  untimely  deatli  did 
the  country  find  out  how  entirely  disinterested  and  faith- 
ful his  life  had  been,  and  how  he  had  made  the  discharge 
of  duty  his  business  and  his  task.  His  character  was  one 
which  is  liable  to  be  regarded  by  ordinary  observers  as 
possessing  none  but  negative  virtues.  He  was  thought  to 
be  cold,  formal,  and  apathetic.  His  manners  were  some- 
what shy  and  constrained,  except  when  he  was  in  the  com- 
pany of  those  he  loved,  and  then  he  commonly  relaxed  into 
a  kind  of  boyish  freedom  and  joyousness.  But  to  the  pub- 
lic in  general  he  seemed  format  and  chilling.  It  is  not 
only  Mr.  Pendennis  who  conceals  his  gentleness  under  a  shy 
and  pompous  demeanor.  With  all  hisf  ability,  his  anxiety 
to  learn,  his  capacity  for  patient  study,  and  his  willingness 
to  welcome  new  ideas,  he  never,  perhaps,  quite  understood 
the  genius  of  the  English  political  system.  His  faithful 
friend  and  counsellor,  Baron  Stockmar,  was  not  the  man 
best  calculated  to  set  him  right  on  this  subject.  Both  were 
far  too  eager  to  find  in  the  English  Constitution  a  piece 
of  symmetrical  mechanism,  or  to  treat  it  as  a  written  code 
from  which  one  might  take  extracts  or  construct  summaries 
for  constant  reference  and  guidance.  But  this  was  not,  in 
the  beginning,  the  cause  of  any  coldness  toward  the  Prince 
on  the  part  of  the  English  public.  Prince  Albert  had  not 
the  ways  of  an  Englishman ;  nnd  the  tendency  of  English- 

5* 


106  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

men,  then  as  now,  was  to  assume  that  to  have  manners  oth- 
er than  those  of  an  Englishman  was  to  be  so  far  unworthy 
of  confidence.  He  was  not  made  to  shine  in  commonplace 
society.  He  could  talk  admirably  about  something,  but 
he  had  not  the  gift  of  talking  about  nothing,  and  probably 
would  not  have  cared  much  to  cultivate  such  a  faculty.  He 
was  fond  of  suggesting  small  innovations  and  improvements 
in  established  systems,  to  the  annoyance  of  men  with  set 
ideas,  who  liked  their  own  ways  best.  Thus  it  happened 
that  he  remained  for  many  years,  if  not  exactly  unappre- 
ciated, yet  not  thoroughly  appreciated,  and  that  a  consid- 
erable and  very  influential  section  of  society  was  always 
ready  to  cavil  at  what  he  said,  and  find  motive  for  suspicion 
in  most  things  that  he  did.  Perhaps  he  was  best  under- 
stood and  most  cordially  appreciated  among  the  poorer 
classes  of  his  wife's  subjects.  He  found  also  more  cordial 
approval  generally  among  the  Radicals  than  among  the 
Tories,  or  even  the  Whigs. 

One  reform  which  Prince  Albert  worked  earnestly  to 
bring  about  was  the  abolition  of  duelling  in  the  army,  and 
the  substitution  of  some  system  of  courts  of  honorable  ar- 
bitration to  supersede  the  barbaric  recourse  to  the  decision 
of  weapons.  He  did  not  succeed  in  having  his  courts  of 
honor  established.  There  was  something  too  fanciful  in  the 
scheme  to  attract  the  authorities  of  our  two  services ;  and 
there  were  undoubtedly  many  practical  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  making  such  a  system  effective.  But  he  succeeded 
so  far,  that  he  induced  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  the 
heads  of  the  services  to  turn  their  attention  very  seriously 
to  the  subject,  and  to  use  all  the  influence  in  their  po\yer 
for  the  purpose  of  discouraging  and  discrediting  the  odious 
practice  of  the  duel.  It  is  carrying.courtly  politeness  too 
far  to  attribute  the  total  disappearance  of  the  duelling  sys- 
tem, as  one  biographer  seems  inclined  to  do,  to  the  personal 
efforts  of  Prince  Albert.  It  is  enough  to  his  honor  that  he 
did  his  best,  and  that  the  best  was  a  substantial  contribu- 
tion toward  so  great  an  object.  But  nothing  can  testify 
more  strikingly  to  the  rapid  growth  of  a  genuine  civiliza- 
tion in  Queen  Victoria's  reign  than  the  utter  discontinuance 
of  the  duelling  system.  When  the  Queen  came  to  the  throne, 
and  for  years  after,  it  was  still  in  full  force.  The  duel  plays 


THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE.        107 

a  conspicuous  part  in  the  fiction  and  the  drama  of  the  reign's 
earlier  years.  It  was  a  common  incident  of  all  political  con- 
troversies. It  was  an  episode  of  most  contested  elections. 
It  was  often  resorted  to  for  the  purpose  of  deciding  the  right 
or  wrong  of  a  half-drunken  quarrel  over  a  card-table.  It 
formed  as  common  a  theme  of  gossip  as  an  elopement  or  a 
bankruptcy.  Most  of  the  eminent  statesmen  who  were  prom- 
inent in  the  earlier  part  of  the  Queen's  reign  had  fought 
duels.  Peel  and  O'Connell  had  made  arrangements  for  a 
"  meeting."  Mr.  Disraeli  had  challenged  O'Connell,  or  any 
of  the  sons  of  O'Connell.  The  great  agitator  himself  had 
killed  his  man  in  a  duel.  Mr.  Roebuck  had  gone  out;  Mr. 
Cobden,  at  a  much  later  period,  had  been  visited  with  a 
challenge,  and  had  had  the  good  sense  and  the  moral  cour- 
age to  laugh  at  it.  At  the  present  hour  a  duel  in  England 
would  seem  as  absurd  and  barbarous  an  anachronism  as 
an  ordeal  by  touch  or  a  witch-burning.  Many  years  have 
passed  since  a  duel  was  last  talked  of  in  Parliament;  and 
then  it  was  only  the  subject  of  a  reprobation  that  had  some 
work  to  do  to  keep  its  countenance  while  administering  the 
proper  rebuke.  But  it  was  not  the  influence  of  any  one 
man,  or  even  any  class  of  men,  that  brought  about  in  so 
short  a  time  this  striking  change  in  the  tone  of  public  feel- 
ing and  morality.  The  change  was  part  of  the  growth  of 
education  and  of  civilization;  of  the  strengthening  and 
broadening  influence  of  the  press,  the  platform,  the  cheap 
book,  the  pulpit,  and  the  less  restricted  intercourse  of  classes. 
This  is,  perhaps,  as  suitable  a  place  as  any  other  to  intro- 
duce some  notice  of  the  attempts  that  w*ere  made  from  time 
to  time  upon  the  life  of  the  Queen.  It  is  proper  to  say  some- 
thing of  them,  although  not  one  possessed  the  slightest  po- 
litical importance,  or  could  be  said  to  illustrate  anything 
more  than  sheer  lunacy,  or  that  morbid  vanity  and  thirst 
for  notoriety  that  is  nearly  akin  to  genuine  madness.  The 
first  attempt  Avas  made  on  June  10th,  1840,  by  Edward 
Oxford,  a  pot-boy  of  seventeen,  who  fired  two  shots  at  the 
Queen  as  she  was  driving  up  Constitution  Hill  with  Prince 
Albert.  Oxford  fired  both  shots  deliberately  enough,  but 
happily  missed  in  each  case.  He  proved  to  have  been  an 
absurd  creature,  half  crazy  with  a  longing  to  consider  him- 
self a  political  prisoner  and  to  be  talked  of.  When  he  was 


A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tried,  the  jury  pronounced  him  insane,  and  he  was  ordered 
to  be  kept  in  a  lunatic  asylum  during  her  Majesty's  pleas- 
ure. The  trial  completely  dissipated  some  wild  alarms  that 
were  felt,  founded  chiefly  on  absurd  papers  in  Oxford's  pos- 
session, about  a  tremendous  secret  society  called  "  Young 
England,"  having  among  its  other  objects  the  assassination 
of  royal  personages.  It  is  not  an  uninteresting  illustration 
of  the  condition  of  public  feeling,  that  some  of  the  Irish 
Catholic  papers  in  seeming  good  iaith  denounced  Oxford  as 
an  agent  of  the  Duke  of  Cumberland  and  the  Orangemen, 
and  declared  that  the  object  was  to  assassinate  the  Queen 
and  put  the  Duke  on  the  throne.  The  trial  showed  that 
Oxford  was  the  agent  of  nobody,  and  was  impelled  by  noth- 
ing but  his  own  crack-brained  love  of  notoriety.  The  find- 
ing of  the  jury  was  evidently  something  of  a  compromise, 
for  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  the  boy  was  insane  in  the 
medical  sense,  and  whether  he  was  fairly  to  be  held  irre- 
sponsible for  his  actions.  But  it  was  felt,  perhaps,  that  the 
wisest  course  was  to  treat  him  as  a  madman ;  and  the  result 
did  not  prove  unsatisfactory.  Mr.  Theodore  Martin,  in  his 
"  Life  of  the  Prince  Consort,"  expresses  a  different  opinion. 
He  thinks  it  would  have  been  well  if  Oxford  had  been  dealt 
M'ith  as  guilty  in  the  ordinary  way.  "The  best  commen- 
tary," he  says,  "  on  the  lenity  thus  shown  was  pronounced 
by  Oxford  himself,  on  being  told  of  the  similar  attempts  of 
Francis  and  Bean  in  1842,  when  he  declared  that  if  he  had 
been  hanged  there  would  have  been  no  more  shooting  at  the 

O  3 

Queen."  It  may  be  reasonably  doubted  whether  the  au- 
thority of  Oxford,  as  to  the  general  influence  of  criminal  leg- 
islation, is  very  valuable.  Against  the  philosophic  opinion 
of  the  half-crazy  young  pot-boy,  on  which  Mr.  Martin  places 
so  much  reliance,  may  be  set  the  fact  that  in  other  countries 
where  attempts  on  the  life  of  the  sovereign  have  been  pun- 
ished by  the  stern  award  of  death,  it  has  not  been  found  that 
the  execution  of  one  fanatic  was  a  safe  protection  against 
the  murderous  fanaticism  of  another. 

On  May  30th,  1842,  a  man  named  John  Francis,  son  of  a 
machinist  in  Drury  Lane,  fired  a  pistol  at  the  Queen  as  she 
was  driving  down  Constitution  Hill,  on  the  very  spot  where 
Oxford's  attempt  was  made.  This  was  a  somewhat  serious 
attempt,  for  Francis  was  not  more  than  a  few  feet  from  the 


THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE.  109 

carriage,  which  fortunately,  was  driving  at  a  very  rapid  rate. 
The  Queen  showed  great  composure.  She  was  in  some 
measure  prepared  for  the  attempt,  for  it  seems  certain  that 
the  same  man  had  on  the  previous  evening  presented  a  pis- 
tol at  the  royal  carriage,  although  he  did  not  then  fire  it. 
Francis  was  arrested  and  put  on  trial.  He  was  only  twenty- 
two  years  of  age,  and  although  at  first  he  endeavored  to 
brazen  it  out  and  put  on  a  sort  of  melodramatic  regicide 
aspect,  yet  when  the  sentence  of  death  for  high-treason  was 
passed  on  him  he  fell  into  a  swoon  and  was  carried  insensible 
from  the  court.  The  sentence  was  not  carried  into  effect. 
It  was  not  certain  whether  the  pistol  was  loaded  at  all,  and 
whether  the  whole  performance  was  not  a  mere  piece  of  bru- 
tal play-acting  done  out  of  a  longing  to  be  notorious.  Her 
Majesty  herself  was  anxious  that  the  death-sentence  should 
not  be  carried  into  eifect,  and  it  was  finally  commuted  to 
one  of  transportation  for  life.  The  very  day  after  this  mit- 
igation of  punishment  became  publicly  known,  another  at- 
tempt was  made  by  a  hunch-backed  lad  named  Bean.  As 
the  Queen  was  passing  from  Buckingham  Palace  to  the 
Chapel  Royal,  Bean  presented  a  pistol  at  her  carriage,  but 
did  not  succeed  in  firing  it  before  his  hand  was  seized  by  a 
prompt  and  courageous  boy  who  was  standing  near.  The 
pistol  was  found  to  be  loaded  with  powder,  paper  closely 
rammed  down,  and  some  scraps  of  a  clay  pipe.  It  may  be 
asked  whether  the  argument  of  Mr.  Martin  is  not  fully  borne 
out  by  this  occurrence,  and  whether  the  fact  of  Bean's  at- 
tempt having  been  made  on  the  day  after  the  commutation 
of  the  capital  sentence  in  the  case  of  Francis  is  not  evidence 
that  the  leniency  in  the  former  instance  was  the  cause  of  the 
attempt  made  in  the  latter.  But  it  was  made  clear,  and  the 
fact  is  recorded  on  the  authority  of  Prince  Albert  himself, 
that  Bean  had  announced  his  determination  to  make  the  at- 
tempt several  days  before  the  sentence  of  Francis  was  com- 
muted, and  while  Francis  was  actually  lying  under  sentence 
of  death.  With  regard  to  Francis  himself,  the  Prince  was 
clearly  of  opinion  that  to  carry  out  the  capital  sentence 
would  have  been  nothing  less  than  a  judicial  murder,  as  it 
is  essential  that  the  act  should  be  committed  with  intent  to 
kill  or  wound,  and  in  Francis's  case,  to  all  appearance,  this 
was  not  the  fact,  or  at  least  it  was  open  to  grave  doubt.  In 


110  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

this  calm  and  wise  way  did  the  husband  of  tbe  Queen,  who 
had  always  shaved  with  her  whatever  of  danger  there  might 
be  in  the  attempts,  argue  as  to  the  manner  in  which  they 
ought  to  be  dealt  with.  The  ambition  which  most  or  all  of 
the  miscreants  who  thus  disturbed  the  Queen  and  the  coun- 
try was  that  of  the  mountebank  rather  than  of  the  assassin. 
The  Queen  herself  showed  how  thoroughly  she  understood 
the  significance  of  all  that  had  happened,  when  she  declared, 
according  to  Mr.  Martin,  that  she  expected  a  repetition  of 
the  attempts  on  her  life  so  long  as  the  law  remained  unal- 
tered by  which  they  could  be  dealt  with  only  as  acts  of  high- 
treason.  The  seeming  dignity  of  martyrdom  had  something 
fascinating  in  it  to  morbid  vanity  or  crazy  fanaticism,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  was  almost  certain  that  the  martyr's 
penalty  would  not  in  the  end  be  inflicted.  A  very  appro- 
priate change  in  the  law  was  effected  by  which  a  punish- 
ment at  once  sharp  and  degrading  was  provided  even  for 
mere  mountebank  attempts  against  the  Queen — a  punish- 
ment which  was  certain  to  be  inflicted.  A  bill  was  intro- 
duced by  Sir  Robert  Peel  making  such  attempts  punishable 
by  transportation  for  seven  years,  or  by  imprisonment  for  a 
term  not  exceeding  three  years,  "the  culprit  to  be  publicly 
or  privately  whipped  as  often  and  in  such  manner  as  the 
court  shall  direct,  not  exceeding  thrice."  Bean  was  con- 
victed under  this  act,  and  sentenced  to  eighteen  months'  im- 
prisonment in  Millbank  Penitentiary.  This  did  not,  how- 
ever, conclude  the  attacks  on  the  Queen.  An  Irish  brick- 
layer, named  Hamilton,  fired  a  pistol,  charged  only  with 
powder,  at  her  Majesty,  on  Constitution  Hill,  on  May  19th, 

1849,  and  was  sentenced  to  seven  years'  transportation.     A 
man  named  Robert  Pate,  once  a  lieutenant  of  hussars,  struck 
her  Majesty  on  the  face  with  a  stick  as  she  was  leaving  the 
Duke  of  Cambridge's  residence  in  her  carriage  on  May  27th, 

1850.  This  man  was  sentenced  to  seven  years'  transporta- 
tion, but  the  judge  paid  so  much  attention  to  the  plea  of  in- 
sanity set  up  on  his  behalf,  as  to  omit  from  his  punishment 
the  whipping  which    might   have   been   ordered.     Finally, 
on  February  29th,  1872,  a  lad  of  seventeen,  named  Arthur 
O'Connor,  presented  a  pistol  at  the  Queen  as  she  was  enter- 
ing Buckingham  Palace  after  a  drive.     The  pistol,  however, 
proved  to  be  unloaded — an  antique  and  useless  or  harmless 


THE  QUEEN'S  MARRIAGE.  Ill 

weapon, with  a  flintlock  which  was  broken,  and  in  the  barrel 
a  piece  of  greasy  red  rag.  The  wretched  lad  held  a  paper 
in  one  hand,  which  was  found  to  be  some  sort  of  petition 
on  behalf  of  the  Fenian  prisoners.  When  he  came  up  for 
trial  a  plea  of  insanity  was  put  in  on  his  behalf,  but  he  did 
not  seem  to  be  insane  in  the  sense  of  being  irresponsible  for 
his  actions  or  incapable  of  understanding  the  penalty  they 
involved,  and  he  was  sentenced  to  twelve  months'  imprison- 
ment and  a  whipping.  We  have  hurried  over  many  years 
for  the  purpose  of  completing  this  painful  and  ludicrous  cat- 
alogue of  the  attempts  made  against  the  Queen.  It  will  be 
seen  that  in  not  a  single  instance  was  there  the  slightest 
political  significance  to  be  attached  to  them.  Even  in  our 
own  softened  and  civilized  time  it  sometimes  happens  that 
an  attempt  is  made  on  the  life  of  a  sovereign  which,  how- 
ever we  may  condemn  and  reprobate  it  on  moral  grounds, 
yet  does  seem  to  bear  a  distinct  political  meaning,  and  to 
show  that  there  are  fanatical  minds  still  burning  under  some 
sense  of  national  or  personal  wrong.  But  in  the  various 
attacks  which  were  made  on  Queen  Victoria  nothing  of  the 
kind  was  even  pretended.  There  was  no  opportunity  for 
iny  vaporing  about  Brutus  and  Charlotte  Corday.  The  im- 
pulse, where  it  was  not  that  of  sheer  insanity,  was  of  kin  to 
the  vulgar  love  of  notoriety  in  certain  minds  which  sets  on 
those  whom  it  pervades  to  mutilate  noble  works  of  art  and 
scrawl  their  autographs  on  the  marble  of  immortal  monu- 
ments. There  was  a  great  deal  of  wisdom  shown  in  not 
dealing  too  severely  with  most  of  these  offences,  and  in  not 
treating  them  too  much  au  serieux.  Pi-face  Albert  himself 
said  that  "the  vindictive  feeling  of  the  common  people 
would  be  a  thousand  times  more  dangerous  than  the  mad- 
ness of  individuals."  There  was  not,  indeed,  the  slightest 
danger  at  any  time  that  the  "common  people"  of  England 
could  be  wrought  up  to  any  sympathy  with  assassination ; 
nor  was  this  what  Prince  Albert  meant.  But  the  Queen 
and  her  husband  were  yet  new  to  power,  and  the  people  had 
not  quite  lost  all  memory  of  sovereigns  who,  well-meaning 
enough,  had  yet  scarcely  understood  constitutional  govern- 
ment, and  there  were  wild  rumors  of  reaction  this  way  and 
revolution  that  way.  It  might  have  fomented  a  feeling  of 
distrust  and  dissatisfaction  if  the  people  had  seen  any  dispo- 


112  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

sition  on  the  part  of  those  in  authority  to  strain  the  criminal 
law  for  the  sake  of  enforcing  a  death  penalty  against  creat- 
ures like  Oxford  and  Bean.  The  most  alarming  and  unnerv 
ing  of  all  dangers  to  a  ruler  is  that  of  assassination.  Even 
the  best  and  most  blameless  sovereign  is  not  wholly  secure 
against  it.  The  hand  of  Oxford  might  have  killed  the  Queen. 
Perhaps,  however,  the  best  protection  a  sovereign  can  have 
is  not  to  exaggerate  the  danger.  There  is  no  safety  in  mere 
severity  of  punishment.  Where  the  attempt  is  serious  and 
desperate,  it  is  that  of  a  fanaticism  which  holds  its  life  in  its 
hand,  and  is  not  to  be  deterred  by  fear  of  death.  The  tort- 
ures of  Ravaillac  did  not  deter  Damiens.  The  birch  in  the 
case  of  Bean  and  O'Connor  may  effectively  discountenance 
enterprises  which  are  born  of  the  mountebank's  and  not  the 
fanatic's  spirit. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    OPIUM    WAR. 

THE  Opium  dispute  with  China  was  going  on  when  the 
Queen  came  to  the  throne.  The  Opium  War  broke  out  soon 
after.  On  March  3d,  1843,  five  huge  wagons,  each  of  them 
drawn  by  four  horses,  and  the  whole  under  escort  of  a  de- 
tachment of  the  60th  Regiment,  arrived  in  front  of  the  Mint. 
An  immense  crowd  followed  the  wagons.  It  was  seen  that 
they  were  filled  with  boxes ;  and  one  of  the  boxes  having 
been  somewhat  broken  in  its  journey,  the  crowd  were  able 
to  see  that  it  was  crammed  full  of  odd-looking  silver  coins. 
The  lookers-on  were  delighted,  as  well  as  amused,  by  the 
sight  of  this  huge  consignment  of  treasure;  and  when  it  be- 
came known  that  the  silver  money  was  the  first  instalment 
of  the  China  ransom,  there  were  lusty  cheers  given  as  the 
wagons  passed  through  the  gates  of  the  Mint.  This  was  a 
payment  on  account  of  the  war  indemnity  imposed  on  China. 
Nearly  four  millions  and  a  half  sterling  was  the  sum  of  the 
indemnity,  in  addition  to  one  million  and  a  quarter  which 
had  already  been  "paid  by  the  Chinese  authorities.  Many 
readers  may  remember  that  for  some  time  "  China  money  " 
was  regularly  set  down  as  an  item  in  the  revenues  of  each 


THE   OPIUM    WAR.  113 

year  with  which  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  had  to 
deal.  The  China  War,  of  which  this  money  was  the  spoil, 
was  not,  perhaps,  an  event  of  which  the  nation  was  entitled 
to  be  very  proud.  It  was  the  precursor  of  other  wars ;  the 
policy  on  which  it  was  conducted  has  never  since  ceased 
altogether  to  be  a  question  of  more  or  less  excited  contro- 
versy; but  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that  if  the  same  events 
were  to  occur  in  our  day  it  would  be  hardly  possible  to  find 
a  ministry  to  originate  a  war,  for  which  at  the  same  time  it 
must  be  owned  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  people,  of  all 
politics  and  classes,  were  only  too  ready  then  to  find  excuse 
and  even  justification.  The  wagon-loads  of  silver  conveyed 
into  the  Mint  amidst  the  cheers  of  the  crowd  were  the  spoils 
of  the  famous  Opium  War. 

Reduced  to  plain  words,  the  principle  for  which  we  fought 
in  the  China  War  was  the  right  of  Great  Britain  to  force  a 
peculiar  trade  upon  a  foreign  people  in  spite  of  the  protesta- 
tions of  the  Government  and  all  such  public  opinion  as  there 
was  of  the  nation.  Of  course  this  was  not  the  avowed  mo- 
tive of  the  war.  Not  often  in  history  is  the  real  and  inspir- 
ing motive  of  a  war  proclaimed  in  so  many  words  by  those 
who  carry  it  on.  Not  often,  indeed,  is  it  seen,  naked  and 
avowed,  even  in  the  minds  of  its  promoters  themselves.  As 
the  quarrel  between  this  country  and  China  went  on,  a  great 
many  minor  and  incidental  subjects  of  dispute  arose,  which 
for  the  moment  put  the  one  main  and  original  question  out 
of  people's  minds ;  and  in  the  course  of  these  discussions  it 
happened  more  than  once  that  the  Chinese  authorities  took 
some  steps  which  put  them  decidedly  in  the  wrong.  Thus 
it  is  true  enough  that  there  were  particular  passages  of  the 
controversy  when  the  English  Government  had  all  or  nearly 
all  of  the  right  on  their  side,  so  far  as  the  immediate  incident 
of  the  dispute  was  concerned ;  and  when,  if  that  had  been 
the  whole  matter  of  quarrel,  or  if  the  quarrel  had  begun 
there,  a  patriotic  minister  might  have  been  justified  in  think- 
ing that  the  Chinese  were  determined  to  offend  England 
and  deserved  humiliation.  But  no  consideration  of  this  kind 
can  now  hide  from  our  eyes  the  fact  that  in  the  beginning 
and  the  very  origin  of  the  quarrel  we  were  distinctly  in  the 
wrong.  We  asserted  or  at  least  acted  on  the  assertion  of 
a  claim  so  unreasonable  and  even  monstrous,  that  it  never 


114  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

could  have  been  made  upon  any  nation  strong  enough  to 
render  its  assertion  a  matter  of  serious  responsibility.  The 
most  important  lessons  a  nation  can  learn  from  its  own  his- 
tory are  found  in  the  exposure  of  its  own  errors.  Historians 
have  sometimes  done  more  evil  than  court  flatterers  when 
they  have  gone  about  to  glorify  the  errors  of  their  own  peo- 
ple, and  to  make  wrong  appear  right,  because  an  English 
Government  talked  the  public  opinion  of  the  time  into  a 
confusion  of  principles. 

The  whole  principle  of  Chinese  civilization,  at  the  time 
when  the  Opium  War  broke  out,  was  based  on  conditions 
which  to  any  modern  nation  must  seem  erroneous  and  un- 
reasonable. The  Chinese  governments  and  people  desired 
to  have  no  political  relations  or  dealings  whatever  with  any 
other  State.  They  were  not  so  obstinately  set  against  private 
and  commercial  dealings ;  but  they  would  have  no  political 
intercourse  with  foreigners,  and  they  would  not  even  recog- 
nize the  existence  of  foreign  peoples  as  States.  They  were 
perfectly  satisfied  with  themselves  and  their  own  systems. 
They  were  convinced  that  their  own  systems  were  not  only 
wise  but  absolutely  perfect.  It  is  superfluous  to  say  that 
this  was  in  itself  evidence  of  ignorance  and  self-conceit.  A 
belief  in  the  perfection  of  their  own  systems  could  only  ex- 
ist among  a  people  who  knew  nothing  of  any  other  systems. 
But  absurd  as  the  idea  must  appear  to  us,  yet  the  Chinese 
might  have  found  a  good  deal  to  say  for  it.  It  Avas  the  re- 
sult of  a  civilization  so  ancient  that  the  oldest  events  pre- 
served in  European  history  were  but  as  yesterday  in  the  com- 
parison. Whatever  its  errors  and  defects,  it  was  distinctly 
a  civilization.  It  was  a  system  with  a  literature  and  laws 
and  institutions  of  its  own ;  it  was  a  coherent  and  harmo- 
nious social  and  political  system  which  had,  on  the  whole, 
worked  tolerably  well.  It  was  not  very  unlike,  in  its  prin- 
ciples, the  kind  of  civilization  which  at  one  time  it  was  the 
whim  of  men  of  genius,  like  Rousseau  and  Diderot,  to  ideal- 
ize and  admire.  The  European,  of  whatever  nation,  may  be 
said  to  like  change,  and  to  believe  in  its  necessity.  His  in- 
stincts and  his  convictions  alike  tend  this  way.  The  sleep- 
iest of  Europeans — the  Neapolitan,  who  lies  with  his  feet  in 
the  water  on  the  Chiaja;  the  Spaniard,  who  smokes  his  cigar 
and  sips  his  coflee  as  if  life  had  no  active  business  whatever; 


THE  OPIUM  WAR.  115 

the  flaneur  of  the  Paris  boulevards;  the  beggar  who  lounged 
from  cabin  to  cabin  in  Ireland  a  generation  ago — all  these, 
no  matter  how  little  inclined  for  change  themselves,  would 
be  delighted  to  hear  of  travel  and  enterprise,  and  of  new 
things  and  new  discoveries.    But  to  the  Chinese,  of  all  East- 
ern races,  the  very  idea  of  travel  and  change  was  something 
repulsive  and  odious.     As  the  thought  of  having  to  go  a 
day  unwashed  would  be  to  the  educated  Englishman  of  our 
age,  or  as  the  edge  of  a  precipice  is  to  a  nervous  man,  so 
was  the  idea  of  innovation  to  the  Chinese  of  that  time.    The 
ordinary  Oriental  dreads  and  detests  change ;  but  the  Chi- 
nese at  that  time  went  as  far  beyond  the  ordinary  Oriental 
as  the  latter  goes  beyond  an  average  Englishman.     In  the 
present  day  a  considerable  alteration  has  taken  place  in  this 
respect.     The  Chinese  have  had  innovation  after  innovation 
forced  on  them,  until  at  last  they  have  taken  up  with  the  new 
order  of  things,  like  people  who  feel  that  it  is  idle  to  resist 
their  fate  any  longer.     The  emigration  from  China  has  been 
as  remarkable  as  that  from  Ireland  or  Germany ;  and  the 
United  States  finds  itself  confronted  with  a  question  of  the 
first  magnitude  when  it  asks  itself  what  is  to  be  the  influ- 
ence and  operation  of  the  descent  of  the  Chinese  popula- 
tions along  the  Pacific  slope.     Japan  has  put  on  modern 
and  European  civilization  like  a  garment.     Japan  effected 
in  a  few  years  a  revolution  in  the  political  constitution  and 
the  social  habits  of  her  people,  and  in  their  very  way  of  look- 
ing at  things,  the  like  of  which  no  other  State  ever  accom- 
plished in  a  century.     But  nothing  of  all  this  was  thought 
of  at  the  time  of  the  China  War.    The  onef  thing  which  China 
asked  of  European  civilization  and  the  thing  called  Modern 
Progress  was  to  be  let  alone.     China's  prayer  to  Europe  was 
that  of  Diogenes  to  Alexander — "Stand  out  of  my  sunshine." 
It  was,  as  we  have  said,  to  political  relationships  rather 
than  to  private  and  commercial  dealings  with  foreign  peo- 
ples that  the  Chinese  felt  an  unconquerable  objection.     They 
did  not,  indeed,  like  even  private  and  commercial  dealings 
with  foreigners.     They  would  much  rather  have  lived  with- 
out ever  seeing  the  face  of  a  foreigner.     But  they  had  put 
up  with  the  private  intrusion  of  foreigners  and  trade,  and 
had  had  dealings  with  American  traders,  and  with  the  East 
India  Company.     The  charter  and  the  exclusive  rights  of 


116  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  East  India  Company  expired  in  April,  1834  ;  the  charter 
was  renewed  under  different  conditions,  and  the  trade  with 
China  was  thrown  open.  One  of  the  great  branches  of  the 
East  India  Company's  business  with  China  was  the  opium 
trade.  When  the  trading  privileges  ceased  this  traffic  was 
taken  up  briskly  by  private  merchants,  who  bought  of  the 
Company  the  opium  which  they  grew  in  India  and  sold  it 
to  the  Chinese.  The  Chinese  governments,  and  all  teachers, 
moralists,  and  persons  of  education  in  China,  had  long  de- 
sired to  get  rid  of  or  put  down  this  trade  in  opium.  They 
considered  it  highly  detrimental  to  the  morals,  the  health, 
and  the  prosperity  of  the  people.  Of  late  the  destructive 
effects  of  opium  have  often  been  disputed,  particularly  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  has  been  said  that  it  is  not,  on 
the  average,  nearly  so  unwholesome  as  the  Chinese  govern- 
ments always  thought,  and  that  it  does  not  do  as  much  pro- 
portionate harm  to  China  as  the  use  of  brandy,  whiskey,  and 
gin  does  to  England.  It  seems  to  this  writer  hardly  possi- 
ble to  doubt  that  the  use  of  opium  is,  on  the  whole,  a  curse 
to  any  nation  ;  but  even  if  this  were  not  so,  the  question  be- 
tween England  and  the  Chinese  governments  would  remain 
just  the  same.  The  Chinese  governments  may  have  taken 
exaggerated  views  of  the  evils  of  the  opium  trade ;  their 
motives  in  wishing  to  put  it  down  may  have  been  mixed 
with  considerations  of  interest  as  much  political  as  philan- 
thropic. Lord  Palmerston  insisted  that  the  Chinese  Gov- 
ernment were  not  sincere  in  their  professed  objection  on 
moral  grounds  to  the  traffic.  If  they  were  sincere,  he  asked, 
why  did  they  not  prevent  the  growth  of  the  poppy  in 
China?  It  was,  he  tersely  put  it,  an  "exportation  of  bullion 
question,  an  agricultural  protection  question  ;"  it  was  a  ques- 
tion of  the  poppy  interest  in  China,  and  of  the  economists 
who  wished  to  prevent  the  exportation  of  the  precious  met- 
als. It  is  curious  that  such  arguments  as  this  could  have 
weighed  with  any  one  for  a  moment.  It  was  no  business 
of  ours  to  ask  ourselves  whether  the  Chinese  Government 
were  perfectly  sincere  in  their  professions  of  a  lofty  morality, 
or  whether  they,  unlike  all  other  governments  that  have  ever 
been  known,  were  influenced  by  one  sole  motive  in  the  mak- 
ing of  their  regulations.  All  that  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  question.  States  are  not  at  liberty  to  help  the  subjects 


THE   OPIUM  WAR.  117 

of  oilier  States  to  break  the  laws  of  their  own  governments. 
Especially  when  these  laws  even  profess  to  concern  ques- 
tions of  morals,  is  it  the  duty  of  foreign  States  not  to  inter- 
fere with  the  regulations  which  a  government  considers  it 
necessary  to  impose  for  the  protection  of  its  people.  All 
traffic  in  opium  was  strictly  forbidden  by  the  governments 
and  laws  of  China;  yet  our  English  traders  carried  on  a 
brisk  and  profitable  trade  in  the  forbidden  article.  Nor 
was  this  merely  an  ordinary  smuggling,  or  a  business  akin 
to  that  of  the  blockade-running  during  the  American  civil 
war.  The  arrangements  with  the  Chinese  Government  al- 
lowed the  existence  of  all  establishments  and  machinery  for 
carrying  on  a  general  trade  at  Canton  and  Macao ;  and  un- 
der cover  of  these  arrangements  the  opium  traders  set  up 
their  regular  head-quarters  in  these  towns. 

Let  us  find  an  illustration  intelligible  to  readers  of  the 
present  day  to  show  how  unjustifiable  was  this  practice. 
The  State  of  Maine,  as  every  one  knows,  prohibits  the  com- 
mon sale  of  spirituous  liquors.  Let  us  suppose  that  several 
companies  of  English  merchants  were  formed  in  Portland 
and  Augusta,  and  the  other  towns  of  Maine,  for  the  purpose 
of  brewing  beer  and  distilling  whiskey,  and  selling  both  to 
the  public  of  Maine  in  defiance  of  the  State  laws.  Let  us 
further  suppose  that  when  the  authorities  of  Maine  proceed- 
ed to  put  the  State  laws  in  force  against  these  intruders, 
our  Government  here  took  up  the  cause  of  the  whiskey-sell- 
ers, and  sent  an  iron-clad  fleet  to  Portland  to  compel  the 
people  of  Maine  to  put  up  with  them.  It  seems  impossible 
to  think  of  any  English  Government  taking  such  a  course  as 
this;  or  of  the  English  public  enduring  it  for  one  moment. 
In  the  case  of  such  a  nation  as  the  United  States,  nothing 

'  O 

of  the  kind  would  be  possible.  The  serious  responsibilities 
of  any  such  undertaking  would  make  even  the  most  thought- 
less minister  pause,  and  would  give  the  public  in  general 
some  time  to  think  the  matter  over;  and  before  any  freak 
of  the  kind  could  be  attempted  the  conscience  of  the  nation 
would  be  aroused,  and  the  unjust  policy  would  have  to  be 
abandoned.  But  in  dealing  with  China  the  ministry  never 
seems  to  have  thought  the  right  or  wrong  of  the  question  a 
matter  Avorthy  of  any  consideration.  The  controversy  was 
entered  upon  with  as  light  a  heart  as  a  modern  war  of  still 


118  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

graver  moment.  The  people  in  general  knew  nothing  about 
the  matter  until  it  had  gone  so  far  that  the  original  point 
of  dispute  was  almost  out  of  sight,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the 
safety  of  English  subjects  and  the  honor  of  England  were 
compromised  in  some  way  by  the  high-handed  proceedings 
of  the  Chinese  Government. 

The  English  Government  appointed  superintendents  to 
manage  our  commercial  dealings  with  China.  Unluckily 
these  superintendents  were  invested  with  a  sort  of  political 
or  diplomatic  character,  and  thus  from  the  first  became  ob- 
jectionable to  the  Chinese  authorities.  One  of  the  first  of 
these  superintendents  acted  in  disregard  of  the  express  in- 
structions of  his  own  Government.  He  was  told  that  he 
must  not  pass  the  entrance  of  the  Canton  River  in  a  vessel 
of  war,  as  the  Chinese  authorities  always  made  a  marked 
distinction  between  ships  of  war  and  merchant  vessels  in  re- 
gard to  the  freedom  of  intercourse.  Misunderstandings  oc- 
curred at  every  new  step  of  negotiation.  These  misunder- 
standings were  natural.  Our  people  knew  hardly  anything 
about  the  Chinese.  The  limitation  of  our  means  of  commu- 
nication with  them  made  this  ignorance  inevitable,  but  cer- 
tainly did  not  excuse  our  acting  as  if  we  were  in  possession 
of  the  fullest  and  most  accurate  information.  The  manner 
in  which  some  of  our  official  instructors  went  on  was  well 
illustrated  by  a  sentence  in  the  speech  of  Sir  James  Graham, 
during  the  debate  on  the  whole  subject  in  the  House  of 
Commons  in  April,  1840.  It  was,  Sir  James  Graham  said,  as 
if  a  foreigner  who  was  occasionally  permitted  to  anchor  at 
the  Nore,  and  at  times  to  land  at  Wapping,  being  placed  in 
close  confinement  during  his  continuance  there,  were  to  pro- 
nounce a  deliberate  opinion  upon  the  resources,  the  genius, 
and  the  character  of  the  British  Empire. 

Our  representatives  were  generally  disposed  to  be  un- 
yielding ;  and  not  only  that,  but  to  see  deliberate  offence 
in  every  Chinese  usage  or  ceremony  which  the  authorities 
endeavored  to  impose  on  them.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
clear  that  the  Chinese  authorities  thoroughly  detested  them 
and  their  mission,  and  all  about  them,  and  often  made  or 
countenanced  delays  that  were  unnecessary,  and  interfer- 
ences which  were  disagreeable  and  offensive.  The  Chinese 
believed  from  the  first  that  the  superintendents  were  there 


THE   OPIUM   WAR.  119 

merely  to  protect  the  opium  trade,  and  to  force  on  China 
political  relations  with  the  West.  Practically  this  was  the 
efl'ect  of  their  presence.  The  superintendents  took  no  steps 
to  aid  the  Chinese  authorities  in  stopping  the  hated  trade. 
The  British  traders  naturally  enough  thought  that  the  Brit- 
ish Government  were  determined  to  protect  them  in  carry- 
ing it  on.  Indeed,  the  superintendents  themselves  might 
well  have  had  the  same  conviction.  The  Government  at 
home  allowed  Captain  Elliott,  the  chief  superintendent,  to 
make  appeal  after  appeal  for  instructions  without  paying 
the  slightest  attention  to  him.  Captain  Elliott  saw  that  the 
opium  traders  were  growing  more  and  more  reckless  and 
audacious;  that  they  were  thrusting  their  trade  under  the 
very  eyes  of  the  Chinese  authorities.  He  also  saw,  as  every 
one  on  the  spot  must  have  seen,  that  the  authorities,  who 
had  been  somewhat  apathetic  for  a  long  time,  were  now  at 
last  determined  to  go  any  lengths  to  put  down  the  traffic. 
At  length  the  English  Government  announced  to  Captain 
Elliott  the  decision  which  they  ought  to  have  made  known 
months,  not  to  say  years  before,  that  "her  Majesty's  Gov- 
ernment could  not  interfere  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  Brit- 
ish subjects  to  violate  the  laws  of  the  country  with  which 
they  trade ;"  and  that  "  any  loss,  therefore,  which  such  per- 
sons may  suffer  in  consequence  of  the  more  effectual  execu- 
tion of  the  Chinese  laws  on  this  subject  must  be  borne  by 
the  parties  who  have  brought  that  loss  on  themselves  by 
their  own  acts."  This  very  wise  and  proper  resolve  came, 
however,  too  late.  The  British  traders  had  been  allowed  to 
go  on  for  a  long  time  under  the  full  conviction  that  the  pro- 
tection of  the  English  Government  was^behind  them,  and 
wholly  at  their  service.  Captain  Elliott  himself  seems  to 
have  now  believed  that  the  announcement  of  his  superiors 
was  but  a  graceful  diplomatic  figure  of  speech.  When  the 
Chinese  authorities  actually  proceeded  to  insist  on  the  for- 
feiture of  an  immense  quantity  of  the  opium  in  the  hand  of 
British  traders,  and  took  other  harsh  but  certainly  not  un- 
natural measures  to  extinguish  the  traffic,  Captain  Elliott 
sent  to  the  Governor  of  India  a  request  for  as  many  ships 
of  war  as  could  be  spared  for  the  protection  of  the  life  and 
property  of  Englishmen  in  China.  Before  long  British  ships 
arrived,  and  the  two  countries  were  at  war. 


120  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  the  successive  steps  by 
which  the  war  came  on.  It  was  inevitable  from  the  mo- 
ment that  the  English  superintendent  identified  himself  with 
the  protection  of  the  opium  trade.  The  English  believed 
that  the  Chinese  authorities  were  determined  on  war,  and 
only  waiting  for  a  convenient  moment  to  make  a  treacher- 
ous beginning.  The  Chinese  were  convinced  that  from  the 
first  we  had  meant  nothing  but  war.  Such  a  condition  of 
feeling  on  both  sides  would  probably  have  made  war  una- 
voidable, even  in  the  case  of  two  nations  who  had  far  much 
better  ways  of  understanding  each  other  than  the  English 
and  Chinese.  It  is  not  surprising  if  the  English  people 
at  home  knew  little  of  the  original  causes  of  the  contro- 
versy. All  that  presented  itself  to  their  mind  was  the  fact 
that  Englishmen  were  in  danger  in  a  foreign  country ;  that 
they  were  harshly  treated  and  recklessly  imprisoned  ;  that 
their  lives  were  in  jeopardy,  and  that  the  flag  of  England 
was  insulted.  There  was"  a  general  notion,  too,  that  the 
Chinese  were  a  barbarous  and  a  ridiculous  people,  who  had 
no  alphabet,  and  thought  themselves  much  better  than  any 
other  people,  even  the  English,  and  that  on  the  whole  it 
would  be  a  good  thing  to  take  the  conceit  out  of  them. 
Those  who  remember  what  the  common  feeling  of  ordinary 
society  was  at  the  time,  will  admit  that  it  did  not  reach  a 
much  loftier  level  than  this.  The  matter  was,  however, 
taken  up  more  seriously  in  Parliament. 

The  policy  of  the  Government  was  challenged  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  but  with  results  of  more  importance  to 
the  existing  composition  of  the  English  Cabinet  than  to  the 
relations  between  this  country  and  China.  Sir  James  Gra- 
ham moved  a  resolution  condemning  the  policy  of  ministers 
for  having,  by  its  uncertainty  and  other  errors,  brought  about 
the  war,  which,  however,  he  did  not  then  think  it  possible  to 
avoid.  A  debate  which  continued  for  three  days  took  place. 
It  was  marked  by  the  same  curious  mixture  of  parties  which 
we  have  seen  in  debates  on  China  questions  in  days  nearer 
to  the  present.  The  defence  of  the  Government  was  opened 
by  Mr.  Macaulay,  who  had  been  elected  for  Edinburgh  and 
appointed  Secretary  at  War.  The  defence  consisted  chiefly 
in  the  argument  that  we  could  not  have  put  the  trade  in 
opium  down,  no  matter  how  earnest  we  had  been,  and  that 


THE   OPIUM   WAR.  121 

it  was  not  necessary  or  possible  to  keep  on  issuing  frequent 
instructions  to  agents  so  far  away  as  our  representatives  in 
China.  Mr.  Macaulay  actually  drew,  from  our  experience 
in  India,  an  argument  in  support  of  his  position.  We  can- 
not govern  India  from  London,  he  insisted ;  we  must,  for  the 
most  part,  govern  India  in  India.  One  can  imagine  how 
Macaulay  would,  in  one  of  his  essays,  have  torn  into  pieces 
such  an  argument  coming  from  any  advocate  of  a  policy  op- 
posed to  his  own.  The  reply,  indeed,  is  almost  too  obvious 
to  need  any  exposition.  In  India  the  complete  materials  of 
administration  were  in  existence.  There  was  a  Governor- 
general;  there  were  councillors;  there  was  an  army.  The 
men  best  qualified  to  rule  the  country  Avere  there,  provided 
with  all  the  appliances  and  forces  of  rule.  In  China  we  had 
an  agent  with  a  vague  and  anomalous  office  dropped  down 
in  the  middle  of  a  hostile  people,  possessed  neither  of  recog- 
nized authority  nor  of  power  to  enforce  its  recognition.  It 
was  probably  true  enough  that  we  could  not  have  put  down 
the  opium  trade;  that  even  with  all  the  assistance  of  the 
Chinese  Government  we  could  have  done  no  more  than  to 
drive  it  from  one  port  in  order  to  see  it  make  its  appearance 
at  another.  But  what  we  ought  to  have  done  is,  therefore, 
only  the  more  clear.  "We  ought  to  have  announced  from  the 
first,  and  in  the  firmest  tone,  that  we  would  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  trade;  that  we  would  not  protect  it;  and  we 
ought  to  have  held  to  this  determination.  As  it  was,  we  al- 
lowed our  traders  to  remain  under  the  impression  that  we 
were  willing  to  support  them,  until  it  was  too  late  to  un- 
deceive them  with  any  profit  to  their  safety  or  our  credit. 
The  Chinese  authorities  acted  after  awhile  with  a  high- 
handed disregard  of  fairness,  and  of  anything  like  what  we 
should  call  the  responsibility  of  law;  but  it  is  evident  that 
they  believed  they  were  themselves  the  objects  of  lawless 
intrusion  and  enterprise.  There  were  on  the  part  of  the  Gov- 
ernment great  efforts  made  to  represent  the  motion  as  an 
attempt  to  prevent  the  ministry  from  exacting  satisfaction 
from  the  Chinese  Government,  and  from  protecting  the  lives 
and  interests  of  Englishmen  in  China.  But  it  is  unfortu- 
nately only  too  often  the  duty  of  statesmen  to  recognize  the 
necessity  of  carrying  on  a  war,  even  while  they  are  of  opin- 
ion that  they  whose  mismanagement  brought  about  the  war 
I.— 6 


122  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

deserve  condemnation.  When  Englishmen  are  being  impris- 
oned and  murdered,  the  innocent  just  as  well  as  the  guilty, 
in  a  foreign  country — when,  in  short,  war  is  actually  going 
on— it  is  not  possible  for  English  statesmen  in  opposition  to 
say, "  We  will  not  allow  England  to  strike  a  blow  in  defence 
of  our  fellow-countrymen  and  our  flag,  because  we  are  of 
opinion  that  better  judgment  on  the  part  of  our  Government 
would  have  spared  us  the  beginning  of  such  a  war."  There 
was  really  no  inconsistency  in  recognizing  the  necessity  of 
carrying  on  the  war,  and  at  the  same  time  censuring  the 
ministry  who  had  allowed  the  necessity  to  be  forced  upon 
us.  Sir  Robert  Peel  quoted  with  great  effect,  during  the 
debate,  the  example  of  Fox,  who  declared  his  readiness  to 
give  every  help  to  the  prosecution  of  a  war  which  the  very 
same  day  he  proposed  to  censure  the  ministry  for  having 
brought  upon  the  country.  With  all  their  efforts,  the  min- 
isters were  only  able  to  command  a  majority  of  nine  votes 
as  the  result  of  the  three  days'  debate. 

The  war,  however,  went  on.  It  was  easy  work  enough  so 
far  as  England  was  concerned.  It  was  on  our  side  nothing 
but  a  succession  of  cheap  victories.  The  Chinese  fought 
very  bravely  in  a  great  many  instances;  and  they  showed 
still  more  often  a  Spartan-like  resolve  not  to  survive  defeat. 
When  one  of  the  Chinese  cities  was  taken  by  Sir  Hugh 
Gough,  the  Tartar  general  went  into  his  house  as  soon  as  lie 
saw  that  all  was  lost,  made  his  servants  set  fire  to  the  build- 
ing, and  calmly  sat  in  his  chair  until  he  was  burned  to  death. 
One  of  the  English  officers  writes  of  the  same  attack,  that  it 
was  impossible  to  compute  the  loss  of  the  Chinese,  "for  when 
they  found  they  could  stand  no  longer  against  us,  they  cut 
the  throats  of  their  wives  and  children,  or  drove  them  into 
wells  or  ponds,  and  then  destroyed  themselves.  In  many 
houses  there  were  from  eight  to  twelve  dead  bodies,  and  I 
myself  saw  a  dozen  women  and  children  drowning  them- 
selves in  a  small  pond  the  day  afjer  the  fight."  We  quick- 
ly captured  the  island  ofChusan,  on  the  east  coast  of  China ; 
a  part  of  our  squadron  went  up  the  Peiho  River  to  threaten 
the  capital ;  negotiation  were  opened,  and  the  preliminaries 
of  a  treaty  were  made  out,  to  which,  however,  neither  the 
English  Government  nor  the  Chinese  would  agree,  and  the 
war  was  reopened.  Chusan  was  again  taken  by  us ;  Ning- 


THE   OPIUM   WAR.  123 

po,  a  large  city  a  few  miles  in  on  the  main-land,  fell  into  our 
hands;  Amoy,  farther  south,  was  captured;  our  troops  were 
before  Nankin  when  the  Chinese  Government  at  last  saw 
how  futile  was  the  idea  of  resisting  our  arms.  Their  women 
or  their  children  might  just  as  well  have  attempted  to  en- 
counter our  soldiers.  With  all  the  bravery  which  the  Chi- 
nese often  displayed,  there  was  something  pitiful,  pathetic, 
ludicrous,  in  the  simple  and  childlike  attempts  which  they 
made  to  carry  on  war  against  us.  They  made  peace  at  last 
on  any  terms  we  chose  to  ask.  We  asked,  in  the  first  in- 
stance, the  cession  in  perpetuity  to  us  of  the  island  of  Hong- 
Kong.  Of  course  we  got  it.  Then  we  asked  that  five  ports 
— Canton,  Amoy,  Foo-Chow-Foo,  Ningpo,  and  Shanghai — 
should  be  thrown  open  to  British  traders,  and  that  consuls 
should  be  established  there.  Needless  to  say  that  this,  too, 
was  conceded.  Then  it  was  agreed  that  the  indemnity  al- 
ready mentioned  should  be  paid  by  the  Chinese  Govern- 
ment— some  four  millions  and  a  half  sterling,  in  addition  to 
one  million  and  a  quarter  as  compensation  for  the  destroyed 
opium.  It  was  also  stipulated  that  correspondence  between 
officials  of  the  two  Governments  was  thenceforth  to  be  car- 
ried on  upon  equal  terms.  The  war  was  over  for  the  pres- 
ent, and  the  thanks  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  were  voted 
to  the  fleet  and  army  engaged  in  the  operations.  The  Duke 
of  Wellington  moved  the  vote  of  thanks  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  He  could  hardly  help,  one  would  think,  forming  in 
his  mind  as  he  spoke  an  occasional  contrast  between  the  ser- 
vices which  he  asked  the  House  to  honor,  and  the  sort  of 
warfare  which  it  had  been  his  glorious  duty  to  engage  in  so 
long.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  a  simple-minded  man, 
with  little  sense  of  humor.  He  did  not,  probably,  perceive 
himself  the  irony  that  others  might  have  seen  in  the  fact 
that  the  conqueror  of  Napoleon,  the  victor  in  years  of  war- 
fare against  soldiers  unsurpassed  in  history,  should  have  had 
to  move  a  vote  of  thanks  to  the  fleet  and  army  which  tri- 
umphed over  the  unarmed,  helpless,  childlike  Chinese. 

The  whole  chapter  of  history  ended,  not  inappropriately 
perhaps,  with  a  rather  pitiful  dispute  between  the  English 
Government  and  the  English  traders  about  the  amount  of 
compensation  to  which  the  latter  laid  claim  for  their  de- 
stroyed opium.  The  Government  were  in  something  of  a 


124  A  HISTOEY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

difficulty ;  for  they  had  formally  announced  that  they  were 
resolved  to  let  the  traders  abide  by  any  loss  which  their 
violation  of  the  laws  of  China  might  bring  upon  them.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  they  had  identified  themselves  by  the 
war  with  the  cause  of  the  traders ;  and  one  of  the  condi- 
tions of  peace  had  been  the  compensation  for  the  opium. 
The  traders  insisted  that  the  amount  given  for  this  purpose 
by  the  Chinese  Government  did  not  nearly  meet  their  losses. 
The  English  Government,  on  the  other  hand,  would  not  ad- 
mit that  they  were  bound  in  any  way  further  to  make  good 
the  losses  of  the  merchants.  The  traders  demanded  to  be 
compensated  according  to  the  price  of  opium  at  the  time 
the  seizure  was  made  ;  a  demand  which,  if  we  admit  any 
claim  at  all,  seems  only  fair  and  reasonable.  The  Govern- 
ment had  clearly  undertaken  their  cause  in  the  end,  and 
were  hardly  in  a  position,  either  logical  or  dignified,  when 
they  afterward  chose  to  say,  "  Yes,  we  admit  that  we  did 
undertake  to  get  you  redress,  but  we  do  not  think  now  that 
we  are  bound  to  give  you  full  redress."  At  last  the  matter 
was  compromised;  the  merchants  had  to  take  what  they 
could  get,  something  considerably  below  their  demand,  and 
give  in  return  to  the  Government  an  immediate  acquittance 
in  full.  It  is  hard  to  get  up  any  feeling  of  sympathy  with 
the  traders  who  lost  on  such  a  speculation.  It  is  hard  to 
feel  any  regret  even  if  the  Government  which  had  done  so 
much  for  them  in  the  war  treated  them  so  shabbily  when 
the  war  was  over ;  but  that  they  were  treated  shabbily  in 
the  final  settlement  seems  to  us  to  allow  of  no  doubt. 

The  Chinese  war,  then,  was  over  for  the  time.  But  as  the 
children  say  that  snow  brings  more  snow,  so  did  that  war 
with  China  bring  other  wars  to  follow  it. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

DECLINE    AND   FALL    OF   THE    WHIG   MINISTRY. 

THE  Melbourne  Ministry  kept  going  from  bad  to  worse. 
There  was  a  great  stirring  in  the  country  all  around  them, 
which  made  their  feebleness  the  more  conspicuous.  We 
sometimes  read  in  history  a  defence  of  some  particular  sov- 


DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF  THE  WHIG   MINISTRY.      125 

ereign  whom  common  opinion  cries  down,  the  defence  being 
a  reference  to  the  number  of  excellent  measures  that  were 
set  in  motion  during  his  reign.  If  we  were  to  judge  of  the 
Melbourne  Ministry  on  the  same  principle,  it  might  seem,  in- 
deed, as  if  their  career  was  one  of  extreme  activity  and  fruit- 
fulness.  Reforms  were  astir  in  almost  every  direction.  In- 
quiries into  the  condition  of  our  poor  and  our  laboring 
classes  were,  to  use  a  cant  phrase  of  the  time,  the  order  of 
the  day.  The  foundation  of  the  colony  of  New  Zealand 
was  laid  with  a  philosophical  deliberation  and  thoughtful- 
ness  which  might  have  reminded  one  of  Locke  and  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  Carolinas.  Some  of  the  first  comprehensive 
and  practical  measures  to  mitigate  the  rigor  arid  to  correct 
the  indiscriminateness  of  the  death  punishment  were  taken 
during  this  period.  One  of  the  first  legislative  enactments 
which  fairly  acknowledged  the  difference  between  an  Eng- 
lish wife  and  a  purchased  slave,  so  far  as  the  despotic  power 
of  the  master  was  concerned,  belongs  to  the  same  time. 
This  was  the  Custody  of  Infants  Bill,  the  object  of  which 
was  to  obtain  for  mothers  of  irreproachable  conduct,  who 
through  no  fault  of  theirs  were  living  apart  from  their  hus- 
bands, occasional  access  to  their  children,  with  the  permis- 
sion and  under  the  control  of  the  Equity  Judges.  It  is  cu- 
rious to  notice  how  long  and  how  fiercely  this  modest  meas- 
ure of  recognition  for  what  may  almost  be  called  the  natu- 
ral rights  of  a  wife  and  a  mother  was  disputed  in  Parlia- 
ment, or  at  least  in  the  House  of  Lords. 

It  is  curious,  too,  to  notice  what  a  clamor  was  raised  over 
the  small  contribution  to  the  cause  of  national  education 
which  was  made  by  the  Melbourne  Government.  In  1834 
the  first  grant  of  public  money  for  the  purposes  of  element- 
ary education  was  made  by  Parliament.  The  sum  granted 
was  twenty  thousand  pounds,  and  the  same  grant  was  made 
every  year  until  1839.  Then  Lord  John  Russell  asked  for 
an  increase  of  ten  thousand  pounds,  and  proposed  a  change 
in  the  manner  of  appropriating  the  money,  tip  to  that  time 
the  grant  had  been  distributed  through  the  National  School 
Society,  a  body  in  direct  connection  with  the  Church  of 
England,  and  the  British  and  Foreign  School  Association, 
which  admitted  children  of  all  Christian  denominations 
without  imposing  on  them  sectarian  teaching.  The  money 


126  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

was  dispensed  by  the  Lords  of  the  Treasury,  who  gave  aid 
to  applicants  in  proportion  to  the  size  and  cost  of  the  school 
buildings,  and  the  number  of  children  who  attended  them. 
Naturally  the  result  of  such  an  arrangement  was  that  the 
districts  which  needed  help  the  most  got  it  the  least.  If  a 
place  was  so  poor  as  not  to  be  able  to  do  anything  for  itself, 
the  Lords  of  the  Treasury  would  do  nothing  for  it.  Nat- 
urally, too,  the  rich  and  powerful  Church  of  England  secured 
the  greater  part  of  the  grant  for  itself.  There  was  no  in- 
spection of  the  schools;  no  reports  were  made  to  Parliament 
as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  system  worked ;  no  steps 
were  taken  to  find  out  if  the  teachers  were  qualified  or  the 
teaching  was  good.  "The  statistics  of  the  schools,"  says  a 
writer  in  the  Edinburgh  liemetc,  "  were  alone  considered — 
the  size  of  the  school-room,  the  cost  of  the  building,  and  the 
number  of  scholars."  In  1839  Lord  John  Russell  proposed 
to  increase  the  grant,  and  an  Order  in  Council  transferred 
its  distribution  to  a  committee  of  the  privy  council,  com- 
posed of  the  president  and  not  more  than  five  members. 
Lord  John  Russell  also  proposed  the  appointment  of  in- 
spectors, the  founding  of  a  model  school  for  the  training  of 
teachers,  and  the  establishment  of  infant  schools.  The  mod- 
el school  and  the  infant  schools  were  to  be  practically  un- 
sectarian.  The  committee  of  the  privy  council  were  to  be 
allowed  to  depart  from  the  principle  of  proportioning  their 
grants  to  the  amount  of  local  contribution,  to  establish  in 
poor  and  crowded  places  schools  not  necessarily  connected 
with  either  of  the  two  educational  societies,  and  to  extend 
their  aid  even  to  schools  where  the  Roman  Catholic  version 
of  the  Bible  was  read.  The  proposals  of  the  Government 
were  fiercely  opposed  in  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  The 
most  various  and  fantastic  forms  of  bigotry  combined  against 
them.  The  application  of  public  money,  and  especially 
through  the  hands  of  the  committee  of  privy  council,  to 
any  schools  not  under  the  control  and  authority  of  the 
Church  of  England  was  denounced  as  a  State  recognition 
of  popery  and  heresy.  Scarcely  less  marvellous  to  us  now 
are  the  speeches  of  those  who  promoted  than  of  those  who 
opposed  the  scheme.  Lord  John  Russell  himself,  who  was 
much  in  advance  of  the  common  opinion  of  those  among 
whom  he  moved,  pleaded  for  the  principles  of  his  measure 


DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF   THE   WHIG   MINISTRY.       127 

in  a  tone  rather  of  apology  than  of  actual  vindication.  He 
did  not  venture  to  oppose  point-blank  the  claim  of  those 
who  insisted  that  it  was  part  of  the  sacred  right  of  the  Es- 
tablished Church  to  have  the  teaching  all  done  in  her  own 
way  or  to  allow  no  teaching  at  all. 

The  Government  did  not  get  all  they  sought  for.  They 
had  a  fierce  fight  for  their  grant,  and  an  amendment  moved 
by  Lord  Stanley,  to  the  effect  that  her  Majesty  be  requested 
to  revoke  the  Order  in  Council  appointing  the  Committee 
on  Education,  was  only  negatived  by  a  .majority  of  two  votes 
— 275  to  273.  In  the  Lords,  to  which  the  struggle  was  trans- 
ferred, the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  actually  moved  and 
carried  by  a  large  majority  an  address  to  the  Queen  pray- 
ing her  to  revoke  the  Order  in  Council.  The  Queen  replied 
firmly  that  the  funds  voted  by  Parliament  would  be  found 
to  be  laid  out  in  strict  accordance  with  constitutional  usage, 
the  rights  of  conscience,  and  the  safety  of  the  Established 
Chui'ch,  and  so  dismissed  the  question.  The  Government, 
therefore,  succeeded  in  establishing  their  Committee  of  Coun- 
cil on  Education,  the  institution  by  which  our  system  of  pub- 
lic instruction  has  been  managed  ever  since.  The  ministry, 
on  the  whole,  showed  to  advantage  in  this  struggle.  They 
took  up  a  principle,  and  they  stood  by  it.  If,  as  we  have 
said,  the  speeches  made  by  the  promoters  of  the  scheme  seem 
amazing  to  any  intelligent  person  of  our  time  because  of  the 
feeble,  apologetic,  and  almost  craven  tone  in  which  they  as- 
sert the  claims  of  a  system  of  national  education,  yet  it  must 
be  admitted  that  the  principle  was  accepted  by  the  Govern- 
ment at  some  risk,  and  that  it  was  not  shabbily  deserted  in 
the  face  of  hostile  pressure.  It  is  worth  noticing  that  while 
the  increased  grant  and  the  principles  on  which  it  was  to  be 
distributed  were  opposed  by  such  men  as  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
Lord  Stanley,  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  Mr.  Disraeli,  it  had  the  sup- 
port of  Mr.  O'Connell  and  of  Mr.  Smith  O'Brien.  Both  these 
Irish  leaders  only  regretted  that  the  grant  was  not  very 
much  larger,  and  that  it  was  not  appropriated  on  a  more 
liberal  principle.  O'Connell  was  the  recognized  leader  of 
the  Irish  Catholics  and  Nationalists ;  Smith  O'Brien  was  an 
aristocratic  Protestant.  With  all  the  weakness  of  the  Whig 
Ministry,  their  term  of  office  must  at  least  be  remarkable  for 
the  new  departure  it  took  in  the  matter  of  national  educa- 


128  A   HISTORY  OP   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

tion.  The  appointment  of  the  Committee  of  Council  marks 
an  epoch. 

Indeed,  the  history  of  that  time  seems  full  of  Reform  proj- 
ects. The  Parliamentary  annals  contain  the  names  of  va- 
rious measures  of  social  and  political  improvement  which 
might  in  themselves,  it  would  seem,  bear  witness  to  the  most 
unsleeping  activity  on  the  part  of  any  ministry.  Measures 
for  general  registration  ;  for  the  reduction  of  the  stamp  duty 
on  newspapers,  and  of  the  duty  on  paper;  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  jail  system ;  for  the  spread  of  vaccination  ;  for 
the  regulation  of  the  labor  of  children  ;  for  the  prohibition 
of  the  employment  of  any  child  or  young  person  under 
twenty-one  in  the  cleaning  of  chimneys  by  climbing;  for 
the  suppression  of  the  punishment  of  the  pillory ;  efforts  to 
relieve  the  Jews  from  civil  disabilities — these  are  but  a  few 
of  the  many  projects  of  social  and  political  reform  that  oc- 
cupied the  attention  of  that  busy  period,  which  somehow 
appears,  nevertheless,  to  have  been  so  sleepy  and  do-nothing. 
How  does  it  come  about  that  we  can  regard  the  ministry  in 
whose  time  all  these  things  were  done  or  attempted  as  ex- 
hausted and  worthless  ? 

One  answer  is  plain.  The  reforming  energy  was  in  the 
time  and  not  in  the  ministry.  In  every  instance  public  opin- 
ion went  far  ahead  of  the  inclinations  of  her  Majesty's  min- 
isters. There  was  a  just  and  general  conviction  that  if  the 
Government  were  left  to  themselves  they  would  do  nothing. 
When  they  were  driven  into  any  course  of  improvement 
they  usually  did  all  they  could  to  minimize  the  amount  of 
reform  to  be  effected.  Whatever  they  undertook  they  seem- 
ed to  undertake  reluctantly,  and  as  if  only  with  the  object 
of  preventing  other  people  from  having  anything  to  do  with 
it.  Naturally,  therefore,  they  got  little  or  no  thanks  for  any 
good  they  might  have  done.  When  they  brought  in  a  meas- 
ure to  abolish  in  various  cases  the  punishment  of  death,  they 
fell  so  far  behind  public  opinion  and  the  inclinations  of  the 
commission  that  had  for  eight  years  been  inquiring  into  the 
state  of  our  criminal  law,  that  their  bill  only  passed  by  very 
narrow  majorities,  and  impressed  many  ardent  reformers  as 
if  it  were  meant  rather  to  withhold  than  to  advance  a  gen- 
uine reform.  In  truth,  it  was  a  period  of  enthusiasm  and 
of  growth,  and  the  ministry  did  not  understand  this.  Lord 


DECLINE   AND  FALL   OF  THE  WHIG  MINISTRY.      129 

Melbourne  seems  to  have  found  it  hard  to  persuade  himself 
that  there  was  any  real  anxiety  in  the  mind  of  any  one  to 
do  anything  in  particular.  He  had,  apparently,  got  into  his 
mind  the  conviction  that  the  only  sensible  thing  the  people 
of  England  could  do  was  to  keep  up  the  Melbourne  Minis- 
try, and  that,  being  a  sensible  people,  they  would  naturally 
do  this.  He  had  grown  into  something  like  the  condition 
of  a  pampered  old  hall-porter,  who,  dozing  in  his  chair,  be- 
gins to  look  on  it  as  an  act  of  rudeness  if  any  visitor  to  his 
master  presumes  to  knock  at  the  door  and  so  disturb  him 
from  his  comfortable  rest. 

Any  one  who  doubts  that  it  was  really  a  time  of  enthusi- 
asm in  these  countries  has  only  to  glance  at  its  history. 
The  Church  of  England  and  the  Church  of  Scotland  were 
alike  convulsed  by  movements  which  were  the  offspring  of 
a  genuine  and  irresistible  enthusiasm — enthusiasm  of  that 
strong,  far-reaching  kind  which  makes  epochs  in  the  history 
of  a  church  or  a  people.  In  Ireland  Father  Mathew,  a  pi- 
ous and  earnest  friar,  who  had  neither  eloquence  nor  learn- 
ing nor  genius,  but  only  enthusiasm  and  noble  purpose,  had 
stirred  the  hearts  of  the  population  in  the  cause  of  temper- 
ance as  thoroughly  as  Peter  the  Hermit  might  have  stirred 
the  heart  of  a  people  to  a  crusade.  Many  of  the  efforts  of 
social  reform  which  are  still  periodically  made  among  our- 
selves had  their  beginning  then,  and  can  scarcely  be  said  to 
have  made  much  advance  from  that  day  to  this.  In  July, 
1840,  Mr.  Hume  moved  in  the  House  of  Commons  for  an  ad- 
dress to  the  Throne,  praying  that  the  British  Museum  and 
the  National  Gallery  might  be  opened  to  the  public  after 
Divine  service  on  Sundays,  "at  such  hours  as  taverns,  beer- 
shops,  and  gin-shops  are  legally  open."  The  motion  was,  of 
course,  rejected  ;  but  it  is  worthy  of  mention  now  as  an  evi- 
dence of  the  point  to  which  the  spirit  of  social  reform  had 
advanced  at  a  period  when  Lord  Melbourne  had  seemingly 
made  up  his  mind  that  reform  had  done  enough  for  his  gen- 
eration, and  that  ministers  might  be  allowed,  at  least  during 
his  time,  to  eat  their  meals  in  peace  without  being  disturbed 
by  the  urgencies  of  restless  Radicals,  or  threatened  with 
hostile  majorities  and  Tory  successes. 

The  Stockdale  case  was  a  disturbance  of  ministerial  repose 
which  at  one  time  threatened  to  brincr  about  a  collision  be- 


180  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tween  the  privileges  of  Parliament  and  the  authority  of  the 
law  courts.  The  Messrs.  Hansard,  the  well-known  Parlia- 
mentary printers,  had  published  certain  Parliamentary  re- 
ports on  prisons,  in  which  it  happened  that  a  book  published 
by  J.  J.  Stockdale  was  described  as  obscene  and  disgusting 
in  the  extreme.  Stockdale  proceeded  against  the  Hansards 
for  libel.  The  Hansards  pleaded  the  authority  of  Parlia- 
ment ;  but  Lord  Chief -justice  Denman  decided  that  the 
House  of  Commons  was  not  Parliament,  and  had  no  author- 
ity to  sanction  the  publication  of  libels  on  individuals.  Out 
of  this  contradiction  of  authorities  arose  a  long  and  often  a 
very  unseemly  squabble.  The  House  of  Commons  would 
not  give  up  its  privileges ;  the  law  courts  would  not  admit 
its  authority.  Judgment  was  given  by  default  against  the 
Hansards  in  one  of  the  many  actions  for  libel  which  arose 
out  of  the  affair,  and  the  sheriffs  of  London  were  called  on 
to  seize  and  sell  some  of  the  Hansards'  property  to  satisfy 
the  demands  of  the  plaintiff.  The  unhappy  sheriffs  were 
placed,  as  the  homely  old  saying  would  describe  it,  between 
the  devil  and  the  deep  sea.  If  they  touched  the  property 
of  the  Hansards  they  were  acting  in  contempt  of  the  privi- 
lege of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  were  liable  to  be  com- 
mitted to  Newgate.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they  refused  to 
carry  out  the  orders  of  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench,  that 
court  would  certainly  send  them  to  prison  for  the  refusal. 
The  reality  of  their  dilemma  was,  in  fact,  very  soon  proved. 
The  amount  of  the  damages  was  paid  into  the  Sheriffs-  Court 
in  order  to  avoid  the  scandal  of  a  sale,  but  under  protest ; 
the  House  of  Commons  ordered  the  sheriffs  to  refund  the 
money  to  the  Hansards ;  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  was 
moved  for  an  order  to  direct  the  sheriffs  to  pay  it  over  to 
1  Stockdale.  The  sheriffs  were  finally  committed  to  the  cus- 
tody of  the  sergeant-at-arms  for  contempt  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  The  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  served  a  writ  of 
habeas  corpus  on  the  sergeant-at-arms  calling  on  him  to  pro- 
duce the  sheriffs  in  court.  The  House  directed  the  sergeant- 
at-arms  to  inform  the  court  that  he  held  the  sheriffs  in  cus- 
tody by  order  of  the  Commons.  The  sergeant-at-arms  took 
the  sheriffs  to  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  and  made  his 
statement  there ;  his  explanation  was  declared  reasonable 
and  sufficient,  and  he  marched  his  prisoners  back  again.  A 


DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF   THE   WHIG   MINISTRY.      131 

great  deal  of  this  ridiculous  sort  of  thing  went  on  which  it 
is  not  now  necessary  to  describe  in  any  detail.  The  House 
of  Commons,  what  -with  the  arrest  of  the  sheriffs  and  of 
agents  acting  on  behalf  of  the  pertinacious  Stockdale,  had 
on  their  hands  batches  of  prisoners  with  whom  they  did  not 
know  in  the  least  what  to  do ;  the  whole  affair  created  im- 
mense popular  excitement  mingled  with  much  ironical  laugh- 
ter. At  last  the  House  of  Commons  had  recourse  to  legisla- 
tion, and  Lord  John  Russell  brought  in  a  bill  on  March  3d, 
1840,  to  afford  summary  protection  to  all  persons  employed 
in  the  publication  of  Parliamentary  papers.  The  preamble 
of  the  measure  declared  that  "  whereas  it  is  essential  to  the 
due  and  effectual  discharge  of  the  functions  and  duties  of 
Parliament  that  no  obstruction  should  exist  to  the  publi- 
cation of  the  reports,  papers,  votes,  or  proceedings  of  either 
House,  as  such  House  should  deem  fit,"  it  is  to  be  lawful 
"for  any  person  or  persons  against  whom  any  civil  or  crimi- 
nal proceedings  shall  be  taken  on  account  of  such  publica- 
tion to  bring  before  the  court  a  certificate  under  the  hand 
of  the  Lord  Chancellor  or  the  Speaker,  stating  that  it  was 
published  by  the  authority  of  the  House,  and  the  proceed- 
ings should  at  once  be  stayed."  This  bill  was  run  quickly 
through  both  Houses — not  without  some  opposition  or  at 
least  murmur  in  the  Upper  House — and  it  became  law  on 
April  14th.  It  settled  the  question  satisfactorily  enough, 
although  it  certainly  did  not  define  the  relative  rights  of 
Parliament  and  the  courts  of  law.  No  difficulty  of  the  same 
kind  has  since  arisen.  The  sheriffs  and  the  other  prisoners 
were  discharged  from  custody  after  awhile,  and  the  public 
excitement  went  out  in  quiet  laughter. 

The  question,  however,  was  a  very  serious  one ;  and  it  is 
significant  that  public  opinion  was  almost  entirely  on  the 
side  of  the  law  courts  and  the  sheriffs.  The  ministry  must 
have  so  fallen  in  public  favor  as  to  bring  the  House  of  Com- 
mons into  disrepute  along  with  them,  or  such  a  sentiment 
could  not  have  prevailed  so  widely  out-of-doors.  The  pub- 
lic seemed  to  see  nothing  in  the  whole  affair  but  a  tyranni- 
cal House  of  Commons  wielding  illimitable  powers  against 
a  few  humble  individuals,  some  of  whom,  the  sheriffs,  for  in- 
stance, had  no  share  in  the  controversy  except  that  imposed 
on  them  by  official  duty.  Accordingly,  the  sheriffs  were  the 


132  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

heroes  of  the  hour,  and  were  toasted  and  applauded  all  over 
the  country.  Assuredly  it  was  an  awkward  position  for  the 
House  of  Commons  to  be  placed  in  when  it  had  to  vindicate 
its  privileges  by  committing  to  prison  men  who  were  merely 
doing  a  duty  which  the  law  courts  imposed  on  them.  It 
would  have  been  better,  probably,  if  the  Government  had 
more  firmly  asserted  the  rights  of  the  House  of  Commons  at 
the  beginning,  and  thus  allowed  the  public  to  see  the  real 
question  which  the  whole  controversy  involved.  Nothing 
can  be  more  clear  now  than  the  paramount  importance  of 
securing  to  each  House  of  Parliament  an  absolute  authority 
and  freedom  of  publication.  No  evil  that  could  possibly 
arise  out  of  the  misuse  of  such  a  power  could  be  anything 
like  that  certain  to  come  of  a  state  of  things  which  restricted 
by  libel  laws,  or  otherwise,  the  right  of  either  House  to  pub- 
lish whatever  it  thought  proper  for  the  public  good.  Not 
a  single  measure  for  the  reform  of  any  great  grievance,  from 
the  abolition  of  slavery  to  the  passing  of  the  Factory  Acts, 
but  might  have  been  obstructed,  and  perhaps  even  prevent- 
ed, if  the  free  exposure  of  existing  evils  were  denied  to  the 
Houses  of  Parliament.  In  this  country,  Parliament  only 
works  through  the  power  of  public  opinion.  A  social  re- 
form is  not  carried  out  simply  by  virtue  of  the  decision  of 
a  cabinet  that  something  ought  to  be  done.  The  attention 
of  the  Legislature  and  of  the  public  has  to  be  called  to  the 
grievance  again  and  again,  by  speeches,  resolutions,  debates, 
and  divisions,  before  there  is  any  chance  of  carrying  a  meas- 
ure on  the  subject.  When  public  opinion  is  ripe,  and  is 
strong  enough  to  help  the  Government  through  with  a  re- 
form in  spite  of  prejudices  and  vested  interests,  then,  and 
not  till  then,  the  reform  is  carried.  But  it  would  be  hardly 
possible  to  bring  the  matter  up  to  this  stage  of  growth  if 
those  who  were  interested  in  upholding  a  grievance  had  the 
power  of  worrying  the  publishers  of  the  Parliamentary  reports 
by  legal  proceedings  in  the  earlier  stages  of  the  discussion. 
Nor  would  it  be  of  any  use  to  protect  merely  the  freedom 
of  debate  in  Parliament  itself.  It  is  not  through  debate, 
but  through  publication,  that  the  public  opinion  of  the  coun- 
try is  reached.  In  truth,  the  poorer  a  man  is,  the  weaker 
and  the  humbler,  the  greater  need  is  there  that  he  should 
call  out  for  the  full  freedom  of  publication  to  be  vested  in 


DECLINE   AND   FALL   OF   THE   WHIG  MINISTRY.      133 

the  hands  of  Parliament.  The  factory  child,  the  climbing 
boy,  the  apprentice  under  colonial  systems  of  modified  slav- 
ery, the  seaman  sent  to  sea  in  the  rotten  ship;  the  woman 
clad  in  unwomanly  rags  who  sings  her  "Song  of  a  Shirt;" 
the  other  woman,  almost  literally  unsexed  in  form,  function, 
and  soul,  who  in  her  filthy  trousers  of  sacking  dragged  on 
all-fours  the  coal  trucks  in  the  mines — these  are  the  tyrants 
and  the  monopolists  for  whom  we  assert  the  privilege  of 
Parliamentary  publication. 

The  operations  which  took  place  about  this  time  in  Syria 
belong,  perhaps,  rather  to  the  general  history  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire  than  to  that  of  England.  But  they  had  so  impor- 
tant a  bearing  on  the  relations  between  this  country  and 
France,  and  are  so  directly  connected  with  subsequent  events 
in  which  England  bore  a  leading  part,  that  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  pass  them  over  without  some  notice  here.  Mo- 
hammed Ali,  Pasha  of  Egypt,  the  most  powerful  of  all  the 
Sultan's  feudatories,  a  man  of  iron  will  and  great  capacity 
both  for  war  and  administration,  had  made  himself  for  a 
time  master  of  Syria.  By  the  aid  of  the  warlike  qualities 
of  his  adopted  son,  Ibrahim  Pasha,  he  had  defeated  the 
armies  of  the  Porte  wherever  he  had  encountered  them. 
Mohammed's  victories  had,  for  the  time,  compelled  the  Porte 
to  allow  him  to  remain  in  power  in  Syria;  but  the  Sultan 
had  long  been  preparing  to  try  another  effort  for  the  reduc- 
tion of  his  ambitious  vassal.  In  1839  the  Sultan  again  de- 
clared war  against  Mohammed  Ali.  Ibrahim  Pasha  again 
obtained  an  overwhelming  victory  over  the  Turkish  army. 
The  energetic  Sultan  Mahmoud,  a  man  not  unworthy  to 
cope  with  such  an  adversary  as  Mohammed  Ali,  died  sud- 
denly ;  and  immediately  after  his  death  the  Capitan  Pasha, 
or  Lord  High  Admiral  of  the  Ottoman  fleet,  went  over  to 
the  Egyptians  with  all  his  vessels;  an  act  of  almost  unexam- 
pled treachery  even  in  the  history  of  the  Ottoman  Empire. 
It  was  evident  that  Turkey  was  not  able  to  hold  her  own 
against  the  formidable  Mohammed  and  his  successful  son ; 
and  the  policy  of  the  Western  Powers  of  Europe,  and  of 
England  especially,  had  long  been  to  maintain  the  Ottoman 
Empire  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  common  State  system. 
The  policy  of  Russia  was  to  keep  up  that  empire  as  long 
as  it  suited  her  own  purposes;  to  take  care  that  no  other 


134  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

Power  got  anything  out  of  Turkey ;  and  to  prepare  the 
way  for  such  a  partition  of  the  spoils  of  Turkey  as  would 
satisfy  Russian  interests.  Russia,  therefore,  was  to  be  found 
now  defending  Turkey,  and  now  assailing  her.  The  course 
taken  by  Russia  was  seemingly  inconsistent;  but  it  was 
only  inconsistent  as  the  course  of  a  sailing  ship  may  be 
which  now  tacks  to  this  side  and  now  to  that,  but  has  a 
clear  object  in  view  and  a  port  to  reach  all  the  while.  Eng- 
land was  then,  and  for  a  long  time  after,  steadily  bent  on 
preserving  the  Turkish  Empire,  and  in  a  great  measure  as 
a  rampart  against  the  schemes  and  ambitions  imputed  to 
Russia  herself.  France  was  less  firmly  set  on  the  mainte- 
nance of  Turkey ;  and  France,  moreover,  had  got  it  into  her 
mind  that  England  had  designs  of  her  own  on  Egypt.  Aus- 
tria was  disposed  to  go  generally  with  England ;  Prussia 
was  little  more  than  a  nominal  sharer  in  the  alliance  that 
was  now  tinkered  np.  It  is  evident  that  such  an  alliance 
could  not  be  very  harmonious  or  direct  in  its  action.  It 
was,  however,  effective  enough  to  prove  too  strong  for  the 
Pasha  of  Egypt.  A  fleet  made  up  of  English,  Austrian,  and 
Turkish  vessels  bombarded  Acre;  an  allied  army  drove  the 
Egyptians  from  several  of  their  strongholds.  Ibrahim  Pasha, 
with  all  his  courage  and  genius,  was  not  equal  to  the  odds 
against  which  lie  now  saw  himself  forced  to  contend.  He 
had  to  succumb.  No  one  could  doubt  that  he  and  his  fa- 
ther were  incomparably  better  able  to  give  good  govern- 
ment and  the  chances  of  development  to  Syria  than  the 
Porte  had  ever  been.  But  in  this  instance,  as  in  others, 
the  odious  principle  was  upheld  by  England  and  her  actual 
allies  that  the  Turkish  Empire  must  be  maintained,  at  no 
matter  what  cost  of  suffering  and  degradation  to  its  subject 
populations.  Mohammed  AH  was  deprived  of  all  his  Asiatic 
possessions,  but  was  secured  in  his  government  of  Egypt. 
A  convention  signed  at  London  on  July  15th,  1840,  arranged 
for  the  imposition  of  those  terms  on  Mohammed  Ali. 

The  convention  was  signed  by  the  representatives  of  Great 
Britain,  Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia,  on  the  one  part,  and  of 
the  Ottoman  Porte  on  the  other.  The  name  of  France  was 
not  found  there.  France  had  drawn  back  from  the  alliance, 
and  for  some  time  seemed  as  if  she  were  likely  to  take  arms 
against  it.  M.  Thiers  was  then  her  Prime-minister  :  he  was 


DECLINE   AND   FALL    OF   THE   WHIG  MINISTRY.      135 

a  man  of  quick  fancy,  restless  and  ambitious  temperament, 
and  what  we  cannot  help  culling  a  vulgar  spirit  of  national 
self-sufficiency — we  are  speaking  now  of  the  Thiers  of  1840, 
not  of  the  wise  and  capable  statesman,  tempered  and  tried 
by  the  fire  of  adversity,  who  reorganized  France  out  of  the 
ruin  and  welter  of  1870.  Thiers  persuaded  himself  and  the 
great  majority  of  his  countrymen  that  England  was  bent 
upon  driving  Mohammed  AH  out  of  Egypt  as  well  as  out  of 
Syria,  and  that  her  object  was  to  obtain  possession  of  Egypt 
for  herself.  For  some  months  it  seemed  as  if  war  were  inev- 
itable between  England  and  France,  although  there  was  not 
in  reality  the  slightest  reason  why  the  two  States  should 
quarrel.  France  was  just  as  far  away  from  any  thought  of 
a  really  disinterested  foreign  policy  as  England.  England, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  not  the  remotest  idea  of  becoming 
the  possessor  of  Egypt.  Fortunately  Louis  Philippe  and  M. 
Guizot  were  both  strongly  in  favor  of  peace  ;  M.  Thiers  re- 
signed ;  and  M.  Guizot  became  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs, 
and  virtually  head  of  the  Government.  Thiers  defended  his 
policy  in  the  French  Chamber  in  a  scream  of  passionate  and 
almost  hysterical  declamation.  Again  and  again  he  declared 
that  his  mind  had  been  made  up  to  go  to  war  if  England  did 
not  at  once  give  way  and  modify  the  terms  of  the  conven- 
tion of  July.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  Thiers  carried  with 
him  much  of  the  excited  public  feeling  of  France.  But  the 
King  and  M.  Guizot  were  happily  supported  by  the  major- 
ity in  and  out  of  the  Chambers;  and  on  July  13th,  1841,  the 
Treaty  of  London  was  signed,  which  provided  for  the  settle- 
ment of  the  affairs  of  Egypt  on  the  basis  of  the  arrangement 
already  made,  and  which  contained,  moreover,  the  stipula- 
tion, to  be  referred  to  more  than  once  hereafter,  by  which 
the  Sultan  declared  himself  firmly  resolved  to  maintain  the 
ancient  principle  of  his  empire — that  no  foreign  ship  of  war 
was  to  be  admitted  into  the  Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus, 
with  the  exception  of  light  vessels  for  which  a  firman  was 
granted. 

The  public  of  this  country  had  taken  but  little  interest  in 
the  controversy  about  Egypt,  at  least  until  it  seemed  like- 
ly to  involve  England  in  a  war  with  France.  Some  of  the 
episodes  of  the  war  were  indeed  looked  upon  with  a  certain 
satisfaction  by  people  here  at  home.  The  bravery  of  Charles 


136  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

Napier,  the  hot-headed,  self- conceited  commodore,  was  en- 
thusiastically extolled,  and  his  feats  of  successful  audacity 
were  glorified  as  though  they  had  shown  the  genius  of  a 
Nelson  or  the  clever  resource  of  a  Cochrane.  Not  many  of 
Napier's  admirers  cared  a  rush  about  the  merits  of  the  quar- 
rel between  the  Porte  and  the  Pasha.  Most  of  them  would 
have  been  just  as  well  pleased  if  Napier  had  been  fighting 
for  the  Pasha  and  against  the  Porte ;  not  a  few  were  ut- 
terly ignorant  as  to  whether  he  was  fighting  for  Porte  or 
for  Pasha.  Those-  who  claimed  to  be  more  enlightened  had 
a  sort  of  general  idea  that  it  was  in  some  way  essential  to 
the  safety  and  glory  of  England  that  whenever  Turkey  was 
in  trouble  we  should  at  once  become  her  champions,  tame 
her  rebels,  and  conquer  her  enemies.  Unfounded  as  were 
the  suspicions  of  Frenchmen  about  our  designs  upon  Egypt, 
they  can  hardly  be  called  very  unreasonable.  Even  a  very 
cool  and  impartial  Frenchman  might  be  led  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  free  England  would  not  without  some  direct  pur- 
pose of  her  own  have  pledged  herself  to  the  cause  of  a  base 
and  a  decaying  despotism. 

Steadily,  meanwhile,  did  the  ministry  go  from  bad  to 
worse.  They  had  greatly  damaged  their  character  by  the 
manner  in  which  they  had  again  and  again  put  up  with  de- 
feat, and  consented  to  resume  or  retain  office  on  any  excuse 
or  pretext.  They  were  remarkably  bad  administrators; 
their  finances  were  wretchedly  managed.  In  later  times 
we  have  come  to  regard  the  Tories  as  especially  weak  in  the 
matter  of  finance.  A  well-managed  revenue  and  a  comfort- 
able surplus  are  generally  looked  upon  as  in  some  way  or 
other  the  monopoly  of  a  Liberal  administration;  while  lav- 
ish expenditure,  deficit,  and  increased  taxation  are  counted 
among  the  necessary  accompaniments  of  a  Tory  Govern- 
ment. So  nearly  does  public  opinion  on  both  sides  go  to 
accepting  these  conditions,  that  there  are  many  Tories  who 
take  it  rather  as  a  matter  of  pride  that  their  leaders  are  not 
mean  economists,  and  who  regard  a  free-handed  expenditure 
of  the  national  revenue  as  something  peculiarly  gentleman- 
like, and  in  keeping  with  the  honorable  traditions  of  a  great 
country  party.  But  this  was  not  the  idea  which  prevailed 
in  the  days  of  the  Melbourne  Ministry.  Then  the  universal 
conviction  was  that  the  Whigs  were  incapable  of  managing 


DECLINE   AND   FALL  OF  THE  WHIG  MINISTRY.      137 

the  finances.  The  budget  of  the  Chancellor  of  the  Excheq- 
uer, Mr.  Baring,  showed  a  deficiency  of  nearly  two  millions. 
This  deficiency  he  proposed  to  meet  in  part  by  alteration  in 
the  sugar  duties;  but  the  House  of  Commons,  after  a  long 
debate,  rejected  his  proposals  by  a  majority  of  thirty-six. 
It  was  then  expected,  of  course,  that  ministers  would  resign; 
but  they  were  not  yet  willing  to  accept  the  consequences 
of  defeat.  They  thought  they  had  another  stone  in  their 
sling.  Lord  John  Russell  had  previously  given  notice  of 
his  intention  to  move  for  a  committee  of  the  whole  House 
to  consider  the  state  of  legislation  with  regard  to  the  trade 
in  corn ;  and  he  now  brought  forward  an  announcement  of 
his  plan,  which  was  to  propose  a  fixed  duty  of  eight  shil- 
lings per  quarter  on  wheat,  and  proportionately  diminished 
rates  on  rye,  barley,  and  oats.  Except  for  its  effect  on  the 
fortunes  of  the  Melbourne  Ministry  there  is  not  the  slightest 
importance  to  be  attached  to  this  proposal.  It  was  an  ex- 
periment in  the  direction  of  the  Free-traders,  who  were  just 
beginning  to  be  powerful,  although  they  were  not  nearly 
strong  enough  yet  to  dictate  the  policy  of  a  government. 
We  shall  have  to  tell  the  story  of  Free-trade  hereafter;  this 
present  incident  is  no  part  of  the  history  of  a  great  move- 
ment; it  is  merely  a  small  party  dodge.  It  deceived  no 
one.  Lord  Melbourne  had  always  spoken  with  the  utter- 
most contempt  of  the  Free-trade  agitation.  With  charac- 
teristic oaths,  he  had  declared  that  of  all  the  mad  things 
he  had  ever  heard  suggested,  Free-trade  was  the  maddest. 
Lord  John  Russell  himself,  although  far  more  enlightened 
than  the  Prime-minister,  had  often  condemned  and  sneered 
at  the  demand  for  Free-trade.  The  conversion  of  the  min- 
isters into  the  official  advocates  of  a  moderate  fixed  duty 
was  all  too  sudden  for  the  conscience,  for  the  very  stomach 
of  the  nation.  Public  opinion  would  not  endure  it.  Noth- 
ing but  harm  came  to  the  Whigs  from  the  attempt.  In- 
stead of  any  new  adherents  or  fresh  sympathy  being  won 
for  them  by  their  proposal,  people  only  asked,  "  Will  noth- 
ing, then,  turn  them  out  of  office?  Will  they  never  have 
done  with  trying  new  tricks  to  keep  in  place?" 

Sir  Robert  Peel  took,  in  homely  phrase,  the  bull  by  the 
horns.  He  proposed  a  direct  vote  of  want  of  confidence — 
a  resolution  declaring  that  ministers  did  not  possess  con- 


138  A  HISTORY   OF   OUE   OWN  TIMES. 

fidence  of  the  House  sufficiently  to  enable  them  to  carry 
through  the  measures  which  they  deemed  of  essential  im- 
portance to  the  public  welfare,  and  that  their  continuance 
in  office  under  such  circumstances  was  at  variance  witli  the 
spirit  of  the  Constitution.  On  June  4th,  1841,  the  division 
was  taken ;  and  the  vote  of  no-confidence  was  carried  by  a 
majority  of  one.  Even  the  Whigs  could  not  stand  this. 
Lord  Melbourne  at  last  began  to  think  that  things  were 

o  o 

looking  serious.  Parliament  was  dissolved,  and  the  result 
of  the  general  election  was  that  the  Tories  were  found  to 
have  a  majority  even  greater  than  they  themselves  had  an- 
ticipated. The  moment  the  new  Parliament  was  assembled 
amendments  to  the  address  were  carried  in  both  Houses  in 
a  sense  hostile  to  the  Government.  Lord  Melbourne  and 
his  colleagues  had  to  resign,  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  in- 
trusted with  the  task  of  forming  an  administration. 

We  have  not  much  more  to  do  with  Lord  Melbourne  in 
this  history.  He  merely  drops  out  of  it.  Between  his  ex- 
pulsion from  office  and  his  death,  which  took  place  in  1848, 
he  did  little  or  nothing  to  call  for  the  notice  of  any  one.  It 
was  said  at  one  time  that  his  closing  years  were  lonesome 
and  melancholy;  but  this  has  lately  been  denied,  and  indeed 
it  is  not  likely  that  one  who  had  such  a  genial  temper  and 
so  many  friends  could  have  been  left  to  the  dreariness  of  a 
not  self-sufficing  solitude  and  to  the  bitterness  of  neglect. 
He  was  a  generous  and  kindly  man ;  his  personal  character, 
although  often  assailed,  was  free  of  any  serious  reproach ; 
he  was  a  failure  in  office,  not  so  much  from  want  of  ability, 
as  because  he  was  a  politician  without  convictions. 

The  Peel  Ministry  came  into  power  with  great  hopes.  It 
had  Lord  Lyndhurst  for  Lord  Chancellor ;  Sir  James  Gra- 
ham for  Home  Secretary ;  Lord  Aberdeen  at  the  Foreign 
Office;  Lord  Stanley  was  Colonial  Secretary.  The  most  re- 
markable man  not  in  the  cabinet,  soon  to  be  one  of  the  fore- 
most statesmen  in  the  country,  was  Mr.  W.  E.  Gladstone. 
It  is  a  fact  of  some  significance  in  the  history  of  the  Peel 
administration,  that  the  elections  which  brought  the  new 
ministry  into  power  brought  Mr.  Cobden  for  the  first  time 
into  the  House  of  Commons. 


MOVEMENTS  IN   THE   CHURCHES.  139 


CHAPTER  X. 

MOVEMENTS    IN   THE    CHURCHES. 

WHILE  Lord  Melbourne  and  his  Whig  colleagues,  still  in 
office,  were  fribbling  away  their  popularity  on  the  pleasant 
assumption  that  nobody  was  particularly  in  earnest  about 
anything,  the  Vice-chancellor  and  heads  of  houses  held  a 
meeting  at  Oxford,  and  passed  a  censure  on  the  celebrated 
"No.  90,"  of  "Tracts  for  the  Times."  The  movement,  of 
which  some  important  tendencies  were  formally  censured  in 
the  condemnation  of  this  tract,  was  one  of  the  most  momen- 
tous that  had  stirred  the  Church  of  England  since  the  Ref- 
ormation. The  author  of  the  tract  was  Dr.  John  Henry 
Newman,  and  the  principal  ground  for  its  censure,  by  voices 
claiming  authority,  was  the  principle  it  seemed  to  put  for- 
ward— that  a  man  might  honestly  subscribe  all  the  articles 
and  formularies  of  the  English  Church,  while  yet  holding 
many  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  against  which 
those  articles  were  regarded  as  a  necessary  protest.  The 
great  movement  which  was  thus  brought  into  sudden  ques- 
tion and  publicity  was  in  itself  an  offspring  of  the  immense 
stirring  of  thought  which  the  French  Revolution  called  up, 
and  which  had  its  softened  echo  in  the  English  Reform  Bill. 
The  centre  of  the  religious  movement  was  to  be  found  in  the 
University  of  Oxford.  When  it  is  in  the  right,  and  when  it 
is  in  the  wrong,  Oxford  has  always  had  more  of  the  senti- 
mental and  of  the  poetic  in  its  cast  of  thought  than  its  rival 
or  colleague  of  Cambridge.  There  were  two  influences  then 
in  operation  over  England,  both  of  which  alike  aroused  the 
alarm  and  the  hostility  of  certain  gifted  and  enthusiastic 
young  Oxford  men.  One  was  the  tendency  to  Rationalism 
drawn  from  the  German  theologians ;  the  other  was  the 
manner  in  which  the  connection  of  the  Church  with  the 
State  in  England  was  beginning  to  operate  to  the  disad- 
vantage of  the  Church  as  a  sacred  institution  and  teacher. 
The  Reform  party  everywhere  were  assailing  the  rights  and 


140  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

property  of. the  Church.  In  Ireland,  especially,  experiments 
were  made  which  every  practical  man  will  now  regard  with 
approval,  whether  he  be  Churchman  or  not,  but  which  seemed 
to  the  devoted  ecclesiast  of  Oxford  to  be  fraught  with  dan- 
ger to  the  freedom  and  influence  of  the  Church.  Out  of  the 
contemplation  of  these  dangers  sprang  the  desire  to  revive 
the  authority  of  the  Church ;  to  quicken  her  with  a  new  vi- 
tality ;  to  give  her  once  again  that  place  as  guide  and  in- 
spirer  of  the  national  life  which  her  ardent  votaries  believed 
to  be  hers  by  right,  and  to  have  been  forfeited  only  by  the 
carelessness  of  her  authorities,  and  their  failure  to  fulfil  the 
duties  of  her  Heaven-assigned  mission. 

No  movement  could  well  have  had  a  purer  source.  None 
could  have  had  more  disinterested  and  high-minded  pro- 
moters. It  was  borne  in  upon  some  earnest,  unresting  souls, 
like  that  of  the  sweet  and  saintly  Keble — souls  "without 
haste  and  without  rest,"  like  Goethe's  star — that  the  Church 
of  England  had  higher  duties  and  nobler  claims  than  the 
business  of  preaching  harmless  sermons  and  the  power  of 
enriching  bishops.  Keble  could  not  bear  to  think  of  the 
Church  taking  pleasure  since  all  is  well.  He  urged  on  some 
of  the  more  vigorous  and  thoughtful  minds  around  him,  or 
rather  he  suggested  it  by  his  influence  and  his  example,  that 
they  should  reclaim  for  the  Church  the  place  which  ought  to 
be  hers,  as  the  true  successor  of  the  Apostles.  He  claimed 
for  her  that  she,  and  she  alone,  was  the  real  Catholic  Church, 
and  that  Rome  had  wandered  away  from  the  right  path,  and 
foregone  the  glorious  mission  which  she  might  have  main- 
tained. Among  those  who  shared  the  spirit  and  purpose  of 
Keble  were  Richard  Hurrell  Froude,  the  historian's  elder 
brother,  who  gave  rich  promise  of  a  splendid  career,  but  who 
died  Avhile  still  in  comparative  youth ;  Dr.  Pusey,  afterward 
leader  of  the  school  of  ecclesiasticism  which  bears  his  name; 
and,  most  eminent  of  all,  Dr.  Newman.  Keble  had  taken 
part  in  the  publication  of  a  series  of  treatises  called  "Tracts 
for  the  Times,"  the  object  of  which  was  to  vindicate  the  real 
mission,  as  the  writers  believed,  of  the  Church  of  England. 
This  was  the  Tractarian  movement,  which  had  such  various 
and  memorable  results.  Newman  first  started  the  project 
of  the  Tracts,  and  wrote  the  most  remarkable  of  them.  He 
had,  up  to  this  time,  been  distinguished  as  one  of  the  most 


MOVEMENTS  IN  THE  CHURCHES.  141 

unsparing  enemies  of  Rome.  At  the  same  time  he  was,  as 
he  has  himself  said,  "fierce"  against  the  "instruments"  and 
the  "  manifestations "  of  "  the  Liberal  cause."  While  he 
was  at  Algiers  once,  a  French  vessel  put  in  there,  flying  the 
tricolor;  Newman  would  not  even  look  at  her.  "On  my 
return,  though  forced  to  stop  twenty -four  hours  at  Paris, 
I  kept  in-doors  the  whole  time,  and  all  that  I  saw  of  that 
beautiful  city  was  what  I  saw  from  the  diligence."  He  had 
never  had  any  manner  of  association  with  Roman  Catholics; 
had,  in  fact,  known  singularly  little  of  them.  As  Newman 
studied  and  wrote  concerning  the  best  way  to  restore  the 
Church  of  England  to  her  proper  place  in  the  national  life, 
he  kept  the  thought  before  him  "that  there  was  something 
greater  than  the  Established  Church,  and  that  that  was  the 
Church  Catholic  and  Apostolic,  set  up  from  the  beginning, 
of  which  she  was  but  the  local  presence  and  the  organ. 
She  was  nothing  unless  she  was  this.  She  must  be  dealt 
with  strongly,  or  she  would  be  lost.  There  was  need  of  a 
second  Reformation."  At  this  time  the  idea  of  leaving  the 
Church  never,  Dr.  Newman  himself  assures  us,  had  crossed 
his  imagination.  He  felt  alarmed  for  the  Church  between 
German  Rationalism  and  man-of-the-world  liberalism.  His 
fear  was  that  the  Church  would  sink  to  be  the  servile  instru- 
ment of  a  State,  and  a  Liberal  State. 

The  abilities  of  Dr.  Newman  were  hardly  surpassed  by 
any  contemporary  in  any  department  of  thought.  His  po- 
sition and  influence  in  Oxford  were  almost  unique.  There 
was  in  his  intellectual  temperament  a  curious  combination 
of  the  mystic  and  the  logical.  He  was  at  once  a  poetic 
dreamer  and  a  sophist — in  the  true  and  not  the  corrupt  and 
ungenerous  sense  of  the  latter  word.  It  had  often  been  said 
of  him  and  of  another  great  Englishman,  that  a  change  in 
their  early  conditions  and  training  would  easily  have  made 
of  Newman  a  Stuart  Mill,  and  of  Mill  a  Newman.  England, 
in  our  time,  has  hardly  had  a  greater  master  of  argument  and 
of  English  prose  than  Newman.  He  is  one  of  the  keenest  of 
dialecticians;  and,  like  Mill,  has  the  rare  art  that  dissolves 
all  the  difficulties  of  the  most  abstruse  or  perplexed  subject, 
and  shows  it  bare  and  clear  even  to  the  least  subtle  of  read- 
ers. His  words  dispel  mists;  and  whether  they  who  listen 
agree  or  not,  they  cannot  fail  to  understand.  A  penetrating, 


142  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

poignant,  satirical  humor  is  found  in  most  of  his  writings,  an 
irony  sometimes  piercing  suddenly  through  it  like  a  darting 
pain.  On  the  other  hand,  a  generous  vein  of  poetry  and  of 
pathos  informs  his  style ;  and  there  are  many  passages  of 
his  works  in  which  he  rises  to  the  height  of  a  genuine  and 
noble  eloquence. 

In  all  the  arts  that  make  a  great  preacher  or  orator  New- 
man was  strikingly  deficient.  His  manner  was  constrained, 
ungraceful,  and  even  awkward ;  his  voice  was  thin  and  weak. 
His  bearing  was  not  at  first  impressive  in  any  way.  A 
gaunt,  emaciated  figure,  a  sharp  and  eagle  face,  a  cold,  medi- 
tative eye,  rather  repelled  than  attracted  those  who  saw  him 
for  the  first  time.  Singularly  devoid  of  affectation,  New  man 
did  not  always  conceal  his  intellectual  scorn  of  men  who 
made  loud  pretence  with  inferior  gifts,  and  the  men  must 
have  been  few  indeed  whose  gifts  were  not  inferior  to  his. 
Newman  had  no  scorn  for  intellectual  inferiority  in  itself;  he 
despised  it  only  when  it  gave  itself  airs.  His  influence  while 
he  was  the  vicar  of  St.  Mary's  at  Oxford  was  profound.  As 
Mr.  Gladstone  said  of  him  in  a  recent  speech,  "  without  os- 
tentation or  effort,  but  by  simple  excellence,  he  was  continu- 
ally drawing  undergraduates  more  and  more  around  him." 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  same  speech  gave  a  description  of  Dr. 
Newman's  pulpit  style  which  is  interesting :  "  Dr.  Newman's 
manner  in  the  pulpit  was  one  which,  if  you  considered  it  in 
its  separate  parts,  would  lead  you  to  arrive  at  very  unsat- 
isfactory conclusions.  There  was  not  very  much  change  in 
the  inflection  of  the  voice ;  action  there  was  none ;  his  ser- 
mons were  read, and  his  eyes  were  always  on  his  book;  and 
all  that,  you  will  say,  is  against  efficiency  in  preaching.  Yes ; 
but  you  take  the  man  as  a  whole,  and  there  was  a  stamp  and 
a  seal  upon  him,  there  was  a  solemn  music  and  sweetness  in 
his  tone,  there  was  a  completeness  in  the  figure,  taken  to- 
gether with  the  tone  and  with  the  manner,  which  made  even 
his  delivery,  such  as  I  have  described  it,  and  though  exclu- 
sively with  written  sermons,  singularly  attractive."  The 
stamp  and  seal  were,  indeed,  those  which  are  impressed  by 
genius,  piety,  and  earnestness.  No  opponent  ever  spoke  of 
Newman  but  with  admiration  for  his  intellect  and  respect 
for  his  character.  Dr.  Newman  had  a  younger  brother,  Fran- 
cis W.  Newman,  who  also  possessed  remarkable  ability  and 


MOVEMENTS  IN   THE   CHURCHES.  143 

earnestness.  He,  too,  was  distinguished  at  Oxford,  and  seem- 
ed to  have  a  great  career  there  before  him.  But  he  was 
drawn  one  way  by  the  wave  of  thought  before  his  more  fa- 
mous brother  had  been  drawn  the  other  way.  In  1830,  the 
younger  Newman  found  himself  prevented  by  religious  scru- 
ples from  subscribing  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  for  his  mas- 
ter's degree.  He  left  the  university,  and  wandered  for  years 
in  the  East,  endeavoring,  not  very  successfully,  perhaps,  to 
teach  Christianity  on  its  broadest  base  to  Mohammedans; 
and  then  he  came  back  to  England  to  take  his  place  among 
the  leaders  of  a  certain  school  of  free  thought.  Fate  had 
dealt  with  those  brothers  as  with  the  two  friends  in  Rich- 
ter's  story :  it  "  seized  their  bleeding  hearts,  and  flung  them 
different  ways." 

When  Dr.  Newman  wrote  the  famous  Tract "  No.  90,"  for 
which  he  was  censured,  he  bowed  to  the  authority  of  his 
bishop,  if  not  to  that  of  the  heads  of  houses;  and  he  discon- 
tinued the  publication  of  such  treatises.  But  he  did  not  ad- 
mit any  change  of  opinion ;  and,  indeed,  soon  after  he  edit- 
ed a  publication  called  The  British  Critic,  in  which  many  of 
the  principles  held  to  be  exclusively  those  of  the  Church  of 
Rome  were  enthusiastically  claimed  for  the  English  Church. 
Yet  a  little  and  the  gradual  working  of  Newman's  mind  be- 
came evident  to  all  the  world.  The  brightest  and  most  pen- 
etrating intellect  in  the  Church  of  England  was  withdrawn 
from  her  service,  and  Newman  went  over  to  the  Church  of 
Rome.  His  secession  Avas  described  by  Mr.  Disraeli,  a  quar- 
ter of  a  century  afterward,  as  having  "dealt  a  blow  to  the 
Church  of  England  under  which  she  still  reels."  To  this  re- 
sult had  the  inquiry  conducted  him  which  had  led  his  friend 
Dr.  Pusey  merely  to  endeavor  to  incorporate  some  of  the 
mysticism  and  the  symbols  of  Rome  with  the  ritual  of  the 
English  Protestant  Church;  which  had  brought  Keble  only 
to  seek  a  more  liberal  and  truly  Christian  temper  for  the 
faith  of  the  Protestant;  and  which  had  sent  Francis  New- 
man into  Radicalism  and  Rationalism. 

In  truth,  it  is  not  difficult  now  to  understand  how  the 
elder  Newman's  mind  became  drawn  toward  the  ancient 
Church  which  won  him  at  last.  We  can  see  from  his  own 
candid  account  of  his  earlier  sentiments  how  profoundly 
mystical  was  his  intellectual  nature,  and  how,  long  before 


144  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

he  was  conscious  of  any  such  tendency,  he  was  drawn  toward 
the  very  symbolisms  of  the  Catholic  Church.  Pascal's  early 
and  unexplained  mastery  of  mathematical  problems  which 
no  one  had  taught  him  is  not  more  suggestive  in  its  way 
than  those  early  drawings  of  Catholic  symbols  and  devices 
which,  done  in  his  childhood,  Newman  says  surprised  and 
were  inexplicable  to  him  when  he  came  on  them  in  years 
long  after.  No  place  could  be  better  fitted  to  encourage 
and  develop  this  tendency  to  mysticism  in  a  thoughtful  mind 
than  Oxford,  with  all  its  noble  memories  of  scholars  and  of 
priests,  with  its  picturesque  and  poetic  surroundings,  and 
its  never-fading  media3valism.  Newman  lived  in  the  past. 
His  spirit  was  with  mediaeval  England.  His  thoughts  were 
of  a  time  when  one  Church  took  charge  of  the  souls  of  a 
whole  united,  devout  people,  and  stood  as  the  guide  and  au- 
thority appointed  for  them  by  Heaven.  He  thought  of  such 
a  time  until  first  he  believed  in  it  as  a  thing  of  the  past, 
and  next  came  to  have  faith  in  the  possibility  of  its  restora- 
tion as  a  thing  of  the  present  and  the  future.  When  once 
he  had  come  to  this  point  the  rest  followed,  "as  by  lot  God 
wot."  No  creature  could  for  a  moment  suppose  that  that 
ideal  Church  was  to  be  found  in  the  English  Establishment, 
submitted  as  it  was  to  State-made  doctrine,  and  to  the  de- 
cision of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  who  might  be  an  infidel  or  a 
free-liver.  The  question  which  Cardinal  Manning  tells  us 
he  asked  himself  years  after,  at  the  time  of  the  Gorham  case, 
must  often  have  presented  itself  to  the  mind  of  Newman — 
Suppose  all  the  Bishops  of  the  Church  of  England  should 
decide  unanimously  on  any  question  of  doctrine,  would  any 
one  receive  the  decision  as  infallible?  Of  course  not.  Such 
is  not  the  genius  or  the  principle  of  the  English  Church. 
The  Church  of  England  has  no  pretension  to  be  considered 
the  infallible  guide  of  the  people  in  matters  even  of  doc- 
trine. Were  she  seriously  to  put  forward  any  such  preten- 
sion, it  would  be  rejected  with  contempt  by  the  common 
mind  of  the  nation.  We  are  not  discussing  questions  of 
dogma  or  the  rival  claims  of  Churches  here ;  we  are  merely 
pointing  out  that  to  a  man  with  Newman's  idea  of  a  church, 
the  Church  of  England  could  not  long  afford  a  home.  That 
very  logical  tendency,  which  in  the  mind  of  Newman,  as 
of  that  of  Pascal,  contended  for  supremacy  with  the  ten- 


MOVEMENTS  IN  THE   CHUKCHES.  145 

dency  to.  devotion  and  mysticism,  only  impelled  him  more 
rigorously  on  his  way.  He  could  not  put  up  with  com- 
promises, and  convince  himself  that  he  ought  to  be  con- 
vinced. He  dragged  every  compromise  and  every  doctrine 
into  the  light,  and  insisted  on  knowing  exactly  what  it 
amounted  to  and  what  it  meant  to  say.  The  doctrines  and 
compromises  of  his  own  Church  did  not  satisfy  him.  There 
are  minds  which,  in  this  condition  of  bewilderment,  might 
have  been  content  to  find  "  no  footing  so  solid  as  doubt." 
Newman  had  not  a  mind  of  that  class.  He  could  not  be- 
lieve in  a  world  without  a  church,  or  a  church  without  what 
he  held  to  be  inspiration ;  and  accordingly  he  threw  his 
whole  soul,  energy,  genius,  and  fame  into  the  cause  of  the 
Church  of  Rome. 

This,  however,  did  not  come  all  at  once.  We  are  antici- 
pating by  a  few  years  the  passing  over  of  Dr.  Newman,  Car- 
dinal Manning,  and  others  to  the  ancient  Church.  It  is 
clear  that  Newman  was  not  himself  conscious  for  a  long 
time  of  the  manner  in  which  he  \vas  being  drawn,  surely  al- 
though not  quickly,  in  the  direction  of  Rome.  He  used  to 
be  accused  at  one  time  of  having  remained  a  conscious  Ro- 
man Catholic  in  the  English  Church,  laboring  to  make  new 
converts.  Apart  from  his  own  calm  assurances,  and  from 
the  singularly  pure  and  candid  nature  of  the  man,  there  are 
reasons  enough  to  render  such  a  charge  absurd.  Indeed, 

O  O  7 

that  simple  and  childish  conception  of  human  nature  which 
assumes  that  a  man  must  always  see  the  logical  consequences 
of  certain  admissions  or  inquiries  beforehand,  because  all  men 
can  see  them  afterward,  is  rather  confusing  and  out  of  place 
when  we  are  considering  such  a  crisis  of  thought  and  feeling 
as  that  which  took  place  in  Oxford,  and  such  men  as  those 
who  were  principally  concerned  in  it.  For  the  present  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  the  object  of  that  movement  was  to  raise 
the  Church  of  England  from  apathy,  from  dull,  easy-going 
acquiescence,  from  the  perfunctory  discharge  of  formal  du- 
ties, and  to  quicken  her  again  with  the  spirit  of  a  priesthood, 
to  arouse  her  to  the  living  work,  spiritual  and  physical,  of 
an  ecclesiastical  sovereignty.  The  impulse  overshot  itself 
in  some  cases,  and  was  misdirected  in  others.  It  proved  a 
failure,  on  the  whole,  as  to  its  definite  aims ;  and  it  some- 
times left  behind  it  only  the  ashes  of  a  barren  symbolism. 
I.— 7 


14:6  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

But  in  its  source  it  was  generous,  beneficent,  and  qoble,  and 
it  is  hard  to  believe  that  there  has  not  been  throughout  the 
Church  of  England,  on  the  whole,  a  higher  spirit  at  work 
since  the  famous  Oxford  movement  began. 

Still  greater  was  the  practical  importance,  at  least  in  de- 
fined results,  of  the  movement  which  went  on  in  Scotland 
about  the  same  time.  A  fortnight  before  the  decision  of  the 
heads  of  houses  at  Oxford  on  Dr.  Newman's  tract,  Lord 
Aberdeen  announced  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  he  did  not 
see  his  way  to  do  anything  in  particular  with  regard  to  the 
dissensions  in  the  Church  of  Scotland.  He  had  tried  a  meas- 
ure, he  said,  the  year  before,  and  half  the  Church  of  Scotland 
liked  it,  and  the  other  half  denounced  it,  and  the  Govern- 
ment opposed  it ;  and  he,  therefore,  had  nothing  further  to 
suggest  in  the  matter.  The  perplexity  of  Lord  Aberdeen 
only  faintly  typified  the  perplexity  of  the  ministry.  Lord 
Melbourne  was  about  the  last  man  in  the  world  likely  to 
have  any  sympathy  with  the  spirit  which  animated  the  Scot- 
tish Reformers,  or  any  notion  of  how  to  get  out  of  the  diffi- 
culty which  the  whole  question  presented.  Differing  as  they 
did  in  so  many  other  points,  there  was  one  central  resem- 
blance between  the  movement  in  the  Kirk  of  Scotland  and 
that  which  was  going  on  in  the  Church  of  England.  In 
both  cases  alike  the  effort  of  the  reforming  party  was  to 
emancipate  the  Church  from  the  control  of  the  State  in  mat- 
ters involving  religious  doctrine  and  duty.  In  Scotland  was 
soon  to  be  presented  the  spectacle  of  a  great  secession  from 
an  Established  Church,  not  because  the  seceders  objected  to 
the  principle  of  a  Church,  but  because  they  held  that  the 
Establishment  was  not  faithful  enough  to  its  mission  as  a 
Church.  One  of  the  seceders  pithily  explained  the  posi- 
tion of  the  controversy  when  he  said  that  he  and  his  fellows 
were  leaving  the  Kirk  of  Scotland,  not  because  she  was  too 
"churchy,"  but  because  she  was  not  "churchy"  enough. 

The  case  was  briefly  this:  During  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne  an  Act  was  passed  which  took  from  the  Church  courts 
in  Scotland  the  free  choice  as  to  the  appointment  of  pastors, 
by  subjecting  the  power  of  the  presbytery  to  the  control 
and  interference  of  the  law  courts.  Harley,  Bolingbroke, 
and  Swift,  not  one  of  whom  cared  a  rush  about  the  supposed 
sanctity  of  an  ecclesiastical  appointment,  were  the  authors 


MOVEMENTS  IN  THE   CHURCHES.  147 

of  tliis  compromise,  which  was  exactly  of  the  kind  that  sen- 
sible men  of  the  world  everywhere  might  be  supposed  likely 
to  accept  and  approve.  In  an  immense  number  of  Scotch 
parishes  the  minister  was  nominated  by  a  lay  patron ;  and 
if  the  presbytery  found  nothing  to  condemn  in  him  as  to 
"  life,  literature,  and  doctrine,"  they  were  compelled  to  ap- 
point him,  however  unwelcome  he  might  be  to  the  parish- 
ioners. Now  it  is  obvious  that  a  man  might  have  a  blame- 
less character,  sound  religious  views,  and  an  excellent  edu- 
cation, and  nevertheless  be  totally  unfitted  to  undertake  the 
charge  of  a  Scottish  parish.  The  Southwark  congregation, 
who  appreciate  and  delight  in  the  ministrations  of  Mr.  Spur- 
geon,  might  very  well  be  excused  if  they  objected  to  having 
a  perfectly  moral  Chai'les  Honeyman,  even  though  his  relig- 
ious opinions  were  identical  with  those  of  their  favorite, 
forced  upon  them  at  the  will  of  some  aristocratic  lay  patron. 
The  effect  of  the  power  conferred  on  the  law  courts  and  the 
patron  was  simply  in  a  great  number  of  cases  to  send  fami- 
lies away  from  the  Church  of  Scotland  and  into  voluntaryism. 
The  Scotch  people  are  above  all  others  impatient  of  any  at- 
tempt to  force  on  them  the  services  of  unacceptable  minis- 
ters. Men  clung  to  the  National  Church  as  long  as  it  was 
national — that  is,  as  long  as  it  represented  and  protected  the 
sacred  claims  of  a  deeply  religious  people.  Dissent,  or  rath- 
er voluntaryism,  began  to  make  a  progress  in  Scotland  that 
alarmed  thoughtful  Churchmen.  To  get  over  the  difficulty, 
the  General  Assembly,  the  highest  ecclesiastical  court  in 
Scotland,  and  likewise  a  sort  of  Church  Parliament,  declared 
that  a  veto  on  the  nomination  of  the  pastor  should  be  exer- 
cised by  the  congregation,  in  accordance  with  a  fundamental 
law  of  the  Church  that  no  pastor  should  be  intruded  on  any 
congregation  contrary  to  the  will  of  the  people.  The  Veto 
Act,  as  this  declaration  was  called,  worked  well  enough  for 
a  short  time,  and  the  highest  legal  authorities  declared  it 
not  incompatible  with  the  Act  of  Queen  Anne.  But  it  di- 
minished far  too  seriously  the  power  of  the  lay  patron  to  be 
accepted  without  a  struggle.  In  the  celebrated  Auchterar- 
der  case  the  patron  Avon  a  victory  over  the  Church  in  the 
courts  of  law,  for  having  presented  a  minister  whose  appoint- 
ment was  vetoed  by  the  congregation  ;  he  obtained  an  order 
from  the  civil  courts  deciding  that  the  presbytery  must  take 


148  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

him  on  trial,  in  obedience  with  the  Act  of  Queen  Anne,  as  he 
was  qualified  by  life,  literature,  and  doctrine.  This  question, 
however,  was  easily  settled  by  the  General  Assembly  of  the 
Church.  They  left  to  the  patron's  nominee  his  stipend  and 
his  house,  and  took  no  further  notice  of  him.  They  did  not 
recognize  him  as  one  of  their  pastors,  but  he  might  have,  if 
he  would,  the  manse  and  the  money  which  the  civil  courts 
had  declared  to  be  his.  They  merely  appealed  to  the  Legis- 
lature to  do  something  which  might  make  the  civil  law  in 
harmony  with  the  principles  of  the  Church.  A  more  serious 
question,  however,  presently  arose.  This  was  the  famous 
Strathbogie  case,  which  brought  the  authority  of  the  Church 
and  that  of  the  State  into  irreconcilable  conflict.  A  minis- 
ter had  been  nominated  in  the  parish  of  Marnoch  who  was  so 
unacceptable  to  the  congregation  that  261  out  of  300  heads 
of  families  objected  to  his  appointment.  The  General  As- 
sembly directed  the  presbytery  of  Strathbogie,  in  which  the 
parish  lay,  to  reject  the  minister,  Mr.  Edwards.  The  pres- 
bytery had  long  been  noted  for  its  leaning  toward  the  claims 
of  the  civil  power,  and  it  very  reluctantly  obeyed  the  com- 
mand of  the  highest  authority  and  ruling  body  of  the  Church. 
Another  minister  Was  appointed  to  the  parish.  Mr.  Edwards 
fought  the  question  out  in  the  civil  court  and  obtained  an 
interdict  against  the  new  appointment,  and  a  decision  that 
the  presbytery  were  bound  to  take  himself  on  trial.  Sev- 
en members,  constituting  the  majority  of  the  presbytery, 
determined,  without  consulting  the  General  Assembly,  to 
obey  the  civil  power,  and  they  admitted  Mr.  Edwards  on 
trial.  The  seven  were  brought  before  the  bar  of  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly,  and  by  an  overwhelming  majority  were  con- 
demned to  be  deposed  from  their  places  in  the  ministry. 
Their  parishes  were  declared  vacant.  A  more  complete  an- 
tagonism between  Church  and  State  is  not  possible  to  imag- 
ine. The  Church  expelled  from  its  ministry  seven  men  for 
having  obeyed  the  command  of  the  civil  laws. 

It  was  on  the  motion  of  Dr.  Chalmers  that  the  seven  min- 
isters were  deposed.  Dr.  Chalmers  became  the  leader  of 
the  movement  which  was  destined  within  two  years  from 
the  time  we  are  now  surveying  to  cause  the  disruption  of 
the  ancient  Kirk  of  Scotland.  No  man  could  be  better  fitted 
for  the  task  of  leadership  in  such  a  movement.  He  was  be- 


MOVEMENTS   IN   THE   CHURCHES.  149 

yond  comparison  the  foremost  man  in  the  Scottish  Church. 
He  was  the  greatest  pulpit  orator  in  Scotland,  or,  indeed,  in 
Great  Britain.  As  a  scientific  writer,  both  on  astronomy 
and  on  political  economy,  he  had  made  a  great  mark.  From 
having  been  in  his  earlier  days  the  minister  of  an  obscure 
Scottish  village  congregation,  he  had  suddenly  sprung  into 
fame.  He  was  the  lion  of  any  city  which  he  happened  to 
visit.  If  he  preached  in  London,  the  church  was  crowded 
with  the  leaders  of  politics,  science,  and  fashion,  eager  to 
hear  him.  The  effect  he  produced  in  England  is  all  the 
more  surprising  seeing  that  he  spoke  in  the  broadest  Scot- 
tish accent  conceivable,  and,  as  one  admirer  admits,  mispro- 
nounced almost  every  word.  We  have  already  quoted  what 
Mr.  Gladstone  said  about  the  style  of  Dr.  Newman ;  let  us 
cite  also  what  he  says  about  Dr.  Chalmers.  "  I  have  heard," 
said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "Dr.  Chalmers  preach  and  lecture.  Be- 
ing a  man  of  Scotch  blood,  I  am  very  much  attached  to 
Scotland,  and  like  even  the  Scotch  accent,  but  not  the 
Scotch  accent  of  Dr.  Chalmers.  Undoubtedly  the  accent  of 
Dr.  Chalmers  in  preaching  and  delivery  was  a  considerable 
impediment  to  his  success;  but  notwithstanding  all  that, it 
was  overborne  by  the  power  of  the  man  in  preaching — over- 
borne by  his  power,  which  melted  into  harmony  with  all  the 
adjuncts  and  incidents  of  the  man  as  a  whole,  so  much  so, 
that  although  I  would  have  said  that  the  accent  of  Dr.  Chal- 
mers was  distasteful,  yet  in  Dr.  Chalmers  himself  I  would  not 
have  had  it  altered  in  the  smallest  degree."  Chalmers  spoke 
with  a  massive  eloquence  in  keeping  with  his  powerful  frame 
and  his  broad  brow  and  his  commanding  presence.  His 
speeches  were  a  strenuous  blending  of  argument  and  emo- 
tion. They  appealed  at  once  to  the  strong  common-sense  and 
to  the  deep  religious  convictions  of  his  Scottish  audiences. 
His  whole  soul  was  in  his  work  as  a  leader  of  religious  move- 
ments. He  cared  little  or  nothing  for  any  popularity  or  fame 
that  he  might  have  won.  Some  strong  and  characteristic 
words  of  his  own  have  told  us  what  he  thought  of  passing 
renown.  He  called  it  "a  popularity  which  rifles  home  of 
its  sweets ;  and  by  elevating  a  man  above  his  fellows  places 
him  in  a  region  of  desolation,  where  he  stands  a  conspicuous 
mark  for  the  shafts  of  malice,  envy,  and  detraction  ;  a  pop- 
ularity which,  with  its  head  among  storms  and  its  feet  on 


150  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  treacherous  quicksands,  has  nothing  to  lull  the  agonies 
of  its  tottering  existence  but  the  hosannas  of  a  drivelling 
generation."  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  these  were 
Chalmers's  genuine  sentiments ;  and  scarcely  any  man  of  his 
time  had  come  into  so  sudden  and  great  an  endowment  of 
popularity.  The  reader  of  to-day  must  not  look  for  ade- 
quate illustration  of  the  genius  and  the  influence  of  Chal- 
mers in  his  published  works.  These  do,  indeed,  show  him 
to  have  been  a  strong  reasoner  and  a  man  of  original  mind ; 
but  they  do  not  show  the  Chalmers  of  Scottish  controversy 
that  Chalmers  must  be  studied  through  the  traces,  lying 
all  around,  of  his  influence  upon  the  mind  and  the  history 
of  the  Scottish  people.  The  Free  Church  of  Scotland  is  his 
monument.  He  did  not  make  that  Church.  It  was  not  the 
work  of  one  man,  or,  strictly  speaking,  of  one  generation. 
It  grew  naturally  out  of  the  inevitable  struggle  between 
Church  and  State.  But  Chalmers  did  more  than  any  other 
man  to  decide  the  moment  and  the  manner  of  its  coming 
into  existence,  and  its  success  is  his  best  monument. 

For  we  may  anticipate  a  little  in  this  instance  as  in  that 
of  the  Oxford  movement,  and  mention  at  once  the  fact  that 
on  May  18th,  1843,  some  five  hundred  ministers  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland,  under  the  leadership  of  Dr.  Chalmers, 
seceded  from  the  old  Kirk  and  set  about  to  form  the  Free 
Church.  The  Government  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  made  a 
weak  effort  at  compromise  by  legislative  enactment,  but  had 
declined  to  introduce  any  legislation  which  should  free  the 
Kirk  of  Scotland  from  the  control  of  the  civil  courts,  and 
there  was  no  course  for  those  who  held  the  views  of  Dr. 
Chalmers  but  to  withdraw  from  the  Church  which  admitted 
that  claim  of  State  control.  Opinions  may  differ  as  to  the 
necessity,  the  propriety  of  the  secession  —  as  to  its  effects 
upon  the  history  and  the  character  of  the  Scottish  people 
since  that  time;  but  there  can  be  no  difference  of  opinion  as 
to  the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  in  which  the  step  was  taken. 
Five  hundred  ministers  on  that  memorable  day  went  delib- 
erately forth  from  their  positions  of  comfort  and  honor,  from 
home  and  competence,  to  meet  an  uncertain  and  a  perilous 
future,  with  perhaps  poverty  and  failure  to  be  the  final  re- 
sult of  their  enterprise,  and  with  misconstruction  and  mis- 
representation to  make  the  bitter  bread  of  poverty  more  bit- 


THE   DISASTERS  OF   CABUL.  151 

ter  still.  In  these  pages  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
merits  of  religious  controversies  ;  and  it  is  no  part  of  our 
concern  to  consider  even  the  social  and  political  effects  pro- 
duced upon  Scotland  by  this  great  secession.  But  we  need 
not  withhold  our  admiration  from  the  men  who  risked  and 
suffered  so  much  in  the  cause  of  what  they  believed  to  be 
their  Church's  true  rights  ;  and  we  are  bound  to  give  this 
admiration  as  cordially  to  the  poor  and  nameless  ministers, 
the  men  of  the  rank  and  file,  about  whose  doings  history  so 
little  concerns  herself,  as  to  the  leaders  like  Chalmers,  who, 
whether  they  sought  it  or  not,  found  fame  shining  on  their 
path  of  self-sacrifice.  The  history  of  Scotland  is  illustrated 
by  many  great  national  deeds.  No  deed  it  tells  of  surpasses 
in  dignity  and  in  moral  grandeur  that  secession — to  cite  the 
words  of  the  protest — "from  an  Establishment  which  we 
loved  and  prized,  through  interference  with  conscience,  the 
dishonor  done  to  Christ's  crown,  and  the  rejection  of  his 
sole  and  supreme  authority  as  King  in  his  Church." 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE   DISASTERS    OF   CABUL. 

THE  earliest  days  of  the  Peel  Ministry  fell  upon  trouble, 
not  indeed  at  home,  but  abroad.  At  home  the  prospect  still 
seemed  bright.  The  birth  of  the  Queen's  eldest  son  was 
an  event  welcomed  by  national  congratulation.  There  was 
still  great  distress  in  the  agricultural  districts ;  but  there 
was  a  general  confidence  that  the  financial  genius  of  Peel 
would  quickly  find  some  way  to  make  burdens  light,  and 
that  the  condition  of  things  all  over  the  country  would  be- 
gin to  mend.  It  was  a  region  far  removed  from  the  knowl- 
edge and  the  thoughts  of  most  Englishmen  that  supplied 
the  news  now  beginning  to  come  into  England  day  after 
day,  and  to  thrill  the  country  with  the  tale  of  one  of  the 
greatest  disasters  to  English  policy  and  English  arms  to 
be  found  in  all  the  record  of  our  dealings  with  the  East. 
There  are  many  still  living  who  can  recall  with  an  impres- 
sion as  keen  as  though  it  belonged  to  yesterday  the  first  ac- 
counts that  reached  this  country  of  the  surrender  at  Cabul, 


152  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

and  the  gradual  extinction  of  the  army  that  tried  to  make 
its  retreat  through  the  terrible  Pass. 

This  grim  chapter  of  history  had  been  for  some  time  in 
preparation.  It  may  be  said  to  open  with  the  reign  itself. 
News  travelled  slowly  then ;  and  it  was  quite  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  things  that  some  part  of  the  empire  might  be 
torn  with  convulsion  for  months  before  London  knew  that 
the  even  and  ordinary  condition  of  things  had  been  disturbed. 
In  this  instance  the  rejoicings  at  the  accession  of  the  young 
Queen  were  still  going  on,  when  a  series  of  events  had  begun 
in  Central  Asia  destined  to  excite  the  profoundest  emotion 
in  England,  and  to  exercise  the  most  powerful  influence  upon 
our  foreign  policy  down  to  the  present  hour.  On  September 
20th,  1837,  Captain  Alexander  Barnes  arrived  at  Cabul,  the 
capital  of  the  State  of  Cabul,  in  the  north  of  Afghanistan, 
and  the  ancient  capital  of  the  Emperor  Baber,  whose  tomb 
is  on  a  hill  outside  the  city.  Burnes  was  a  famous  Oriental- 
ist and  traveller,  the  Burton  or  Burnaby  of  his  day  ;  he  had 
conducted  an  expedition  into  Central  Asia;  had  published 
his  travels  in  Bokhara,  and  had  been  sent  on  a  mission  by 
the  Indian  Government,  in  whose  service  he  was,  to  study 
the  navigation  of  the  Indus.  He  was,  it  may  be  remarked, 
a  member  of  the  family  of  Robert  Burns,  the  poet  himself 
having  changed  the  original  spelling  of  the  name  which  all 
the  other  members  of  the  family  retained.  The  object  of 
the  journey  of  Captain  Burnes  to  Cabul  in  1837  was,  in  the 
first  instance,  to  enter  into  commercial  relations  with  Dost 
Mahomed,  then  ruler  of  Cabul,  and  with  other  chiefs  of  the 
western  regions.  But  events  soon  changed  his  business 
from  a  commercial  into  a  political  and  diplomatic  mission ; 
and  his  tragic  fate  would  make  his  journey  memorable  to 
Englishmen  forever,  even  if  other  events  had  not  grown  out 
of  it  which  give  it  a  place  of  more  than  personal  importance 
in  history. 

The  great  region  of  Afghanistan,  with  its  historical  boun- 
daries as  varying  and  difficult  to  fix  at  certain  times  as  those 
of  the  old  Dukedom  of  Burgundy,  has  been  called  the  land 
of  transition  between  Eastern  and  Western  Asia.  All  the 
great  ways  that  lead  from  Persia  to  India  pass  through  that 
region.  There  is  a  proverb  which  declares  that  no  one  can 
be  king  of  Hindostan  without  first  becoming  lord  of  Cabul. 


THE  DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  153 

The  Afghans  are  the  ruling  nation,  but  among  them  had 
long  been  settled  Hindoos,  Arabs,  Armenians,  Abyssinians, 
and  men  of  other  races  and  religions.  The  Afghans  are 

o  o 

Mohammedans  of  the  Shunite  sect,  but  they  allowed  Hindoos, 
Christians,  and  even  the  Persians,  who  are  of  the  hated  dis- 
senting sect  of  the  Shiites,  to  live  among  them,  and  even  to 
rise  to  high  position  and  influence.  The  founder  of  the  Af- 
ghan Empire,  Ahmed  Shah,  died  in  1773.  He  had  made  an 
empire  which  stretched  from  Herat  on  the  west  to  Sirhind 
on  the  east,  and  from  the  Oxus  and  Cashmere  on  the  north 
to  the  Arabian  Sea  and  the  mouths  of  the  Indus  on  the 
south.  The  death  of  his  son,  Timur  Shah,  delivered  the 
kingdom  up  to  the  hostile  factions,  intrigues,  and  quarrels 
of  his  sons :  the  leaders  of  a  powerful  tribe,  the  Barukzyes, 
took  advantage  of  the  events  that  arose  out  of  this  condi- 
tion of  things  to  dethrone  the  descendants  of  Ahmed  Shah. 
When  Captain  Burnes  visited  Afghanistan  in  1832,  the  only 
part  of  all  their  great  inheritance  which  yet  remained  with 
the  descendants  of  Ahmed  Shah  was  the  principality  of  He- 
rat. The  remainder  of  Afghanistan  was  parcelled  out  be- 
tween Dost  Mahomed  and  his  brothers.  Dost  Mahomed 
was  a  man  of  extraordinary  ability  and  energy.  He  would 
probably  have  made  a  name  as  a  soldier  and  a  statesman 
anywhere.  He  had  led  a  stormy  youth,  but  had  put  away 
with  maturity  and  responsibility  the  vices  and  follies  of  his 
earlier  years.  There  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  although 
he  was  a  usurper,  he  was  a  sincere  lover  of  his  country,  and 
on  the  whole  a  wise  and  just  ruler.  When  Captain  Burnes 
visited  Dost  Mahomed,  he  was  received  with  every  mark  of 
friendship  and  favor.  Dost  Mahomed  professed  to  be,  and 
no  doubt  at  one  time  was,  a  sincere  friend  of  the  English 
Government  and  people.  There  was,  however,  at  that  time 
a  quarrel  going  on  between  the  Shah  of  Persia  and  the  Prince 
of  Herat,  the  last  enthroned  representative,  as  has  been  al- 
ready said,  of  the  great  family  on  whose  fall  Dost  Mahomed 
and  his  brothers  had  mounted  into  power.  So  far  as  can 
now  be  judged,  there  does  seem  to  have  been  serious  and 
genuine  ground  of  complaint  on  the  part  of  Persia  against 
the  ruler  of  Herat.  But  it  is  probable,  too,  that  the  Persian 
Shah  had  been  seeking  for,  and  in  any  case  would  have 
found,  a  pretext  for  making  war;  and  the  strong  impression 

7* 


154  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

at  the  time  in  England,  and  among  the  authorities  in  India, 
was  that  Persia  herself  was  but  a  puppet  in  the  hands  of 
Russia.  A  glance  at  the  map  will  show  the  meaning  of  this 
suspicion  and  the  reasons  which  at  once  gave  it  plausibility, 
and  would  have  rendered  it  of  grave  importance.  If  Persia 
were  merely  the  instrument  of  Russia,  and  if  the  troops  of 
the  Shah  were  only  the  advance  guard  of  the  Czar,  then,  un- 
doubtedly, the  attack  on  Herat  might  have  been  regarded 
as  the  first  step  of  a  great  movement  of  Russia  toward  our 
Indian  dominion. 

There  were  other  reasons,  too,  to  give  this  suspicion  some 
plausibility.  Mysterious  agents  of  Russia,  officers  in  her  ser- 
vice and  others,  began  to  show  themselves  in  Central  Asia 
at  the  time  of  Captain  Burnes's  visit  to  Dost  Mahomed. 
Undoubtedly  Russia  did  set  herself  for  some  reason  to  win 
the  friendship  and  alliance  of  Dost  Mahomed ;  and  Captain 
Burnes  was  for  his  part  engaged  in  the  same  endeavor.  All 
considerations  of  a  merely  commercial  nature  had  long  since 
been  put  away,  and  Burnes  was  freely  and  earnestly  negoti- 
ating with  Dost  Mahomed  for  his  alliance.  Burnes  always 
insisted  that  Dost  Mahomed  himself  was  sincerely  anxious 
to  become  an  ally  of  England,  and  that  lie  offered  more  than 
once,  on  his  own  free  part,  to  dismiss  the  Russian  agents  even 
without  seeing  them,  if  Burnes  desired  him  to  do  so.  But 
for  some  reason  Burnes's  superiors  did  not  share  his  confi- 
dence. In  Downing  Street  and  in  Simla  the  profouudest  dis- 
trust of  Dost  Mahomed  prevailed.  It  was  again  and  again 
impressed  on  Burnes  that  he  must  regard  Dost  Mahomed  as 
a  treacherous  enemy,  and  as  a  man  playing  the  part  of  Per- 
sia and  of  Russia.  It  is  impossible  now  to  estimate  fairly 
all  the  reasons  which  may  have  justified  the  English  and 
the  Indian  Governments  in  this  conviction.  But  we  know 
that  nothing  in  the  policy  afterward  followed  out  by  the 
Indian  authorities  exhibited  any  of  the  judgment  and  wis- 
dom that  would  warrant  us  in  taking  anything  for  granted 
on  the  mere  faith  of  their  dictum.  The  story  of  four  years 
— almost  to  a  day  the  extent  of  this  sad  chapter  of  English 
history — will  be  a  tale  of  such  misfortune,  blunder,  and  hu- 
miliation as  the  annals  of  England  do  not  anywhere  else  pre- 
sent. Blunders  which  were,  indeed,  worse  than  crimes,  and  a 
principle  of  action  which  it  is  a  crime  in  any  rulers  to  sane- 


THE  DISASTERS  OF  CABUL.  155 

lion,  brought  things  to  such  a  pass  with  us  that  in  a  few 
years  from  the  accession  of  the  Queen  we  had  in  Afghanis- 
tan soldiers  who  were  positively  afraid  to  fight  the  enemy, 
and  some  English  officials  who  were  not  ashamed  to  treat 
for  the  removal  of  our  most  formidable  foes  by  purchased 
assassination.  It  is  a  good  thing  for  us  all  to  read  in  cold 

o  o 

blood  this  chapter  of  our  history.  It  will  teach  us  how  vain 
is  a  policy  founded  on  evil  and  ignoble  principles ;  how  vain 
is  the  strength  and  courage  of  men  when  they  have  not  lead- 
ers fit  to  command.  It  may  teach  us,  also,  not  to  be  too 
severe  in  our  criticism  of  other  nations.  The  failure  of  the 
French  invasion  of  Mexico  under  the  Second  Empire  seems 
like  glory  when  compared  with  the  failure  of  our  attempt 
to  impose  a  hated  sovereign  on  the  Afghan  people. 

Captain  Burnes  then  was  placed  in  the  painful  difficulty 
of  having  to  carry  out  a  policy  of  which  he  entirely  disap- 
proved. He  believed  in  Dost  Mahomed  as  a  friend,  and  he 
was  ordered  to  regard  him  as  an  enemy.  It  would  have 
been  better  for  the  career  and  for  the  reputation  of  Burnes 
if  he  had  simply  declined  to  have  anything  to  do  with  a 
course  of  action  which  seemed  to  him  at  once  unjust  and  un- 
wise. But  Burnes  was  a  young  man,  full  of  youth's  energy 
and  ambition.  He  thought  he  saw  a  career  of  distinction 
opening  before  him,  and  he  was  unwilling  to  close  it  abrupt- 
ly by  setting  himself  in  obstinate  opposition  to  his  superi- 
ors. He  was,  besides,  of  a  quick  mercurial  temperament,  over 
which  mood  followed  mood  in  rapid  succession  of  change. 
A  slight  contradiction  sometimes  threw  him  into  momenta- 
ry despondency ;  a  gleam  of  hope  elated  him  into  the  assur- 
ance that  all  was  won.  It  is  probable  that  after  awhile  he 
may  have  persuaded  himself  to  acquiesce  in  the  judgment 
of  his  chiefs.  On  the  other  hand,  Dost  Mahomed  was  placed 
in  a  position  of  great  difficulty  and  dangei'.  He  had  to 
choose.  He  could  not  remain  absolutely  independent  of  all 
the  disputants.  If  England  would  not  support  him,  he  must 
for  his  own  safety  find  alliances  elsewhere — in  Russian  state- 
craft, for  example.  He  told  Burnes  of  this  again  and  again, 
and  Burnes  endeavored,  without  the  slightest  success,  to  im- 
press his  superiors  with  his  own  views  as  to  the  reasonable- 
ness of  Dost  Mahomed's  arguments.  Runjeet  Singh,  the  dar- 
ing and  successful  adventurer  who  had  annexed  the  whole 


156  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

province  of  Cashmere  to  his  dominions,  was  the  enemy  of 
Dost  Mahomed  and  the  faithful  ally  of  England.  Dost  Ma- 
homed thought  the  British  Government  could  assist  him  in 
coming  to  terms  with  Runjeet  Singh,  and  Burnes  had  as- 
sured him  that  the  British  Government  would  do  all  it  could 
to  establish  satisfactory  terms  of  peace  between  Afghanistan 
and  the  Punjaub,  over  which  Runjeet  Singh  ruled.  Burnes 
wrote  from  Cabul  to  say  that  Russia  had  made  substantial 
offers  to  Dost  Mahomed ;  Persia  had  been  lavish  in  her  bid- 
dings for  his  alliance ;  Bokhara  and  other  states  had  not  been 
backward ;  "  yet  in  all  that  has  passed,  or  is  daily  transpir- 
ing, the  chief  of  Cabul  declares  that  he  prefers  the  sympathy 
and  friendly  offices  of  the  British  to  all  these  cffers,  however 
alluring  they  may  seem,  from  Persia  or  from  the  Emperor; 
which  places  his  good-sense  in  a  light  more  than  prominent, 
and  in  my  humble  judgment  proves  that  by  an  earlier  atten- 
tion to  these  countries  we  might  have  escaped  the  whole  of 
these  intrigues  and  held  long  since  a  stable  influence  in  Ca- 
bul." Burnes,  however,  was  unable  to  impress  his  superiors 
with  any  belief  either  in  Dost  Mahomed  or  in  the  policy 
which  he  himself  advocated,  and  the  result  was  that  Lord 
Auckland,  the  Governor-general  of  India,  at  length  resolved 
to  treat  Dost  Mahomed  as  an  enemy,  and  to  drive  him  from 
Cabul.  Lord  Auckland,  therefore,  entered  into  a  treaty  with 
Runjeet  Singh  and  Shah  Soojah-ool-Moolk,  the  exiled  repre- 
sentative of  what  we  may  call  the  legitimist  rulers  of  Af- 
ghanistan, for  the  restoration  of  the  latter  to  the  throne  of 
his  ancestors,  and  for  the  destruction  of  the  power  of  Dost 
Mahomed. 

It  ought  to  be  a  waste  of  time  to  enter  into  any  argument 
in  condemnation  of  such  a  policy  in  our  days.  Even  if  its 
results  had  not  proved  in  this  particular  instance  its  most 
striking  and  exemplary  condemnation,  it  is  so  grossly  and 
flagrantly  opposed  to  all  the  principles  of  our  more  modern 
statesmanship  that  no  one  among  us  ought  now  to  need  a 
warning  against  it.  Dost  Mahomed  was  the  accepted,  pop- 
ular, and  successful  ruler  of  Cabul.  No  matter  what  our 
quarrel  with  him,  we  had  not  the  slightest  right  to  make  it 
an  excuse  for  forcing  on  his  people  a  ruler  whom  they  had 
proved  before,  as  they  were  soon  to  prove  again,  that  they 
thoi'oughly  detested.  Perhaps  the  nearest  parallel  to  our 


THE   DISASTERS   OF  CABUL.  157 

policy  in  this  instance  is  to  be  found  in  the  French  invasion 
of  Mexico,  and  the  disastrous  attempt  to  impose  a  foreign 
ruler  on  the  Mexican  people.  Each  experiment  ended  in  ut- 
ter failure,  and  in  the  miserable  death  of  the  unfortunate 
puppet  prince  who  was  put  forward  as  the  figure-head  of  the 
enterprise.  But  the  French  Emperor  could  at  least  have 
pleaded  in  his  defence  that  Maximilian  of  Austria  had  not 
already  been  tried  and  rejected  by  the  Mexican  people.  Our 
protege  had  been  tried  and  rejected.  The  French  Emper- 
or might  have  pleaded  that  he  had  actual  and  substantial 
wrongs  to  avenge.  We  had  only  problematical  and  possi- 
ble dangers  to  guard  against.  In  any  case,  as  has  been  al- 
ready said,  the'calamities  entailed  on  French  arms  and  coun- 
sels by  the  Mexican  intervention  read  like  a  page  of  .brilliant 
success  when  compared  with  the  immediate  result  of  our  en- 
terprise in  Cabul.  Before  passing  away  from  this  part  of 
the  subject,  it  is  necessary  to  mention  the  fact  that  among 
its  many  unfortunate  incidents  the  campaign  led  to  some 
peculiarly  humiliating  debates  and  some  lamentable  accusa- 
tions in  the  House  of  Commons.  Years  after  Burnes  had 
been  flung  into  his  bloody  grave,  it  was  found  that  the  Eng- 
lish Government  had  presented  to  the  House  of  Commons 
his  despatches  in  so  mutilated  and  altered  a  form,  that  Burnes 
was  made  to  seem  as  if  he  actually  approved  and  recom- 
mended the  policy  which  he  especially  warned  us  to  avoid. 
It  is  painful  to  have  to  record  such  a  fact,  but  it  is  indispen- 
sable that  it  should  be  recorded.  It  would  be  vain  to  at- 
tempt to  explain  how  the  principles  and  the  honor  of  Eng- 
lish statesmanship  fell,  for  the  hour,  under  the  demoralizing 
influence  which  allowed  such  things  to  be  thought  legiti- 
mate. An  Oriental  atmosphere  seemed  to  have  gathered 
around  our  official  leaders.  In  Afghanistan  they  were  en- 
tering into  secret  and  treacherous  treaties ;  in  England  they 
were  garbling  despatches.  When,  years  after,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  was  called  upon  to  defend  the  policy  which  had  thus 
dealt  with  the  despatches  of  Alexander  Burnes,  he  did  not 
say  that  the  documents  were  not  garbled.  He  only  con- 
tended that,  as  the  Government  had  determined  not  to  act 
on  the  advice  of  Burnes,  they  were  in  nowise  bound  to  pub- 
lish those  passages  of  his  despatches  in  which  he  set  forth 
assumptions  which  they  believed  to  be  unfounded,  and  ad- 


158  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

vised  a  policy  which  they  looked  upon  as  mistaken.  Such 
a  defence  is  only  to  be  read  with  wonder  and  pain.  The 
Government  were  not  accused  of  suppressing  passages  which 
they  believed,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to  be  worthless.  The  ac- 
cusation was  that,  by  suppressing  passages  and  sentences 
here  and  there,  Barnes  was  made  to  appear  as  if  he  were 
actually  recommending  the  policy  against  which  he  was  at 
the  time  most  earnestly  protesting.  Burnes  was  himself  the 
first  victim  of  the  policy  which  he  strove  against,  and  which 
all  England  has  since  condemned.  No  severer  word  is  need- 
ed to  condemn  the  mutilation  of  his  despatches  than  to  say 
that  he  was  actually  made  to  stand  before  the  country  as 
responsible  for  having  recommended  that  very  policy.  "It 
should  never  be  forgotten,"  says  Sir  J.  W.  Kaye,  the  histori- 
an of  the  Afghan  War,  "  by  those  who  would  form  a  correct 
estimate  of  the  character  and  career  of  Alexander  Burnes, 
that  both  had  been  misrepresented  in  those  collections  of 
State  papers  which  are  supposed  to  furnish  the  best  materi- 
als of  history,  but  which  are  often  in  reality  only  one-sided 
compilations  of  garbled  documents — counterfeits,  which  the 
ministerial  stamp  forces  into  currency,  defrauding  a  present 
generation,  and  handing  down  to  posterity  a  chain  of  dan- 
gerous lies." 

Meanwhile  the  Persian  attack  on  Herat  had  practically 
failed,  owing  mainly  to  the  skill  and  spirit  of  a  young  Eng- 
lish officer,  Eldred  Pottinger,  who  was  assisting  the  prince 
in  his  resistance  to  the  troops  of  the  Persian  Shah.  Lord 
Auckland,  however,  ordered  the  assemblage  of  a  British 
force  for  service  across  the  Indus,  and  issued  a  famous  man- 
ifesto, dated  from  Simla,  October  1st,  1838,  in  which  lie  set 
forth  the  motives  of  his  policy.  The  Governor- general 
stated  that  Dost  Mahomed  had  made  a  sudden  and  unpro- 
voked attack  upon  our  ancient  ally,  Runjeet  Singh,  and  that 
when  the  Persian  army  was  besieging  Herat,  Dost  Mahomed 
was  giving  undisguised  support  to  the  designs  of  Persia. 
The  chiefs  of  Candahar,  the  brothers  of  Dost  Mahomed,  had 
also,  Lord  Auckland  declared,  given  in  their  adherence  to 
the  plan  of  Persia.  Great  Britain  regarded  the  advance  of 
Persian  arms  in  Afghanistan  as  an  act  of  hostility  toward 
herself.  The  Governor-general  had,  therefore,  resolved  to 
support  the  claims  of  the  Shah  Soojah-ool-Moolk,  whose  do- 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  159 

minions  had  been  usurped  by  the  existing  rulers  of  Cabul, 
and  who  had  found  an  honorable  asylum  in  British  territo- 
ry ;  and  "  whose  popularity  throughout  Afghanistan  " — Lord 
Auckland  wrote  in  words  that  must  afterward  have  read 
like  the  keenest  and  cruellest  satire  upon  his  policy — "  had 
been  proved  to  his  Lordship  by  the  strong  and  unanimous 
testimony  of  the  best  authorities."  This  popular  sovereign, 
this  favorite  of  his  people,  was  at  the  time  living  in  exile, 
without  the  faintest  hope  of  ever  again  being  restored  to  his 
dominions.  We  pulled  the  poor  man  out  of  his  obscurity, 
told  him  that  his  people  were  yearning  for  him,  and  that  we 
would  set  him  on  his  throne  once  more.  We  entered  for  the 
purpose  into  the  tripartite  treaty  already  mentioned.  Mr. 
(afterward  Sir  W.  H.)  Macnaghten,  Secretary  to  the  Govern- 
ment of  India,  was  appointed  to  be  envoy  and  minister  at 
the  court  of  Shah  Soojah ;  and  Sir  Alexander  Burnes  (who 
had  been  recalled  from  the  court  of  Dost  Mahomed,  and  re- 
warded with  a  title  for  giving  the  advice  which  his  superiors 
thought  absurd)  was  deputed  to  act  under  his  direction.  It 
is  only  right  to  say  that  the  policy  of  Lord  Auckland  had 
the  entire  approval  of  the  British  Government.  It  was  af- 
terward stated  in  Parliament  on  the  part  of  the  ministry 
that  a  despatch  recommending  to  Lord  Auckland  exactly 
such  a  course  as  he  pursued  crossed  on  the  way  his  despatch 
announcing  to  the  Government  at  home  that  he  had  already 
undertaken  the  enterprise. 

We  conquered  Dost  Mahomed  and  dethroned  him.  He 
made  a  bold  and  brilliant,  sometimes  even  a  splendid  resist- 
ance. We  took  Ghuznee  by  blowing  up  one  of  its  gates 
with  bags  of  powder,  and  thus  admitting  the  rush  of  a 
storming-party.  It  was  defended  by  one  of  the  sons  of  Dost 
Mahomed,  who  became  our  prisoner.  We  took  Jellalabad, 
which  was  defended  by  Akbar  Khan,  another  of  Dost  Ma- 
homed's sons,  whose  name  came  afterward  to  have  a  hateful 
sound  in  all  English  ears.  As  we  approached  Cabul,  Dost 
Mahomed  abandoned  his  capital  and  fled  with  a  few  horse- 
men across  the  Indus.  Shah  Soojah  entered  Cabul  accom- 
panied by  the  British  officers.  It  was  to  have  been  a  tri- 
umphal entry.  The  hearts  of  those  who  believed  in  his 
cause  must  have  sunk  within  them  when  they  saw  how  the 
Shah  was  received  by  the  people  who,  Lord  Auckland  was 


160  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

assured,  were  so  devoted  to  him.  The  city  received  him  in 
sullen  silence.  Few  of  its  people  condescended  even  to  turn 
out  to  see  him  as  he  passed.  The  vast  majority  stayed 
away,  and  disdained  even  to  look  at  him.  One  would  have 
thought  that  the  least  observant  eye  must  have  seen  that 
his  throne  could  not  last  a  moment  longer  than  the  time 
during  which  the  strength  of  Britain  was  willing  to  support 
it.  The  British  army,  however,  withdrew,  leaving  only  a 
contingent  of  some  eight  thousand  men,  besides  the  Shah's 
own  hirelings,  to  maintain  him  for  the  present.  Sir  W. 
Macnaghten  seems  to  have  really  believed  that  the  work 
was  done,  and  that  Shah  Soojah  was  as  safe  on  his  throne  as 
Queen  Victoria.  He  was  destined  to  be  very  soon  and  very 
cruelly  undeceived. 

Dost  Mahomed  made  more  than  one  effort  -to  regain  his 
place.  He  invaded  Shah  Soojah's  dominions,  and  met  the 
combined  forces  of  the  Shah  and  their  English  ally  in  more 
than  one  battle.  On  November  2d,  1840,  he  won  the  admi- 
ration of  the  English  themselves  by  the  brilliant  stand  he 
made  against  them.  With  his  Afghan  horse  he  drove  our 
cavalry  before  him,  and  forced  them  to  seek  the  shelter  of 
the  British  guns.  The  native  troopers  would  not  stand 
against  him :  they  fled,  and  left  their  English  officers,  who 
vainly  tried  to  rally  them.  In  this  battle  of  Purwandurrah 
victory  might  not  unreasonably  have  been  claimed  for  Dost 
Mahomed.  He  won  at  least  his  part  of  the  battle.  No 
tongues  have  praised  him  louder  than  those  of  English  his- 
torians. But  Dost  Mahomed  had  the  wisdom  of  a  states- 
man as  well  as  the  genius  of  a  soldier.  He  knew  well  that 
he  could  not  hold  out  against  the  strength  of  England.  A 
savage  or  semi-barbarous  chieftain  is  easily  puifed  up  by  a 
seeming  triumph  over  a  great  Power,  and  is  led  to  his  de- 
struction by  the  vain  hope  that  he  can  hold  out  against  it 
to  the  last.  Dost  Mahomed  had  no  such  ignorant  and  idle 
notion.  Perhaps  he  knew  well  enough,  too,  that  time  was 
wholly  on  his  side ;  that  he  had  only  to  wait  and  see  the 
sovereignty  of  Shah  Soojah  tumble  into  pieces.  The  even- 
ing after  his  brilliant  exploit  in  the  field  Dost  Mahomed  rode 
quietly  to  the  quarters  of  Sir  W.  Macnaghten,  met  the  en- 
voy, who  was  retaining  from  an  evening  ride,  and  to  Mac- 
nasfhten's  utter  amazement  announced  himself  as  Dost  Ma- 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  161 

homed,  tendered  to  the  envoy  the  sword  that  had  flashed 
so  splendidly  across  the  field  of  the  previous  day's  fight, 
and  surrendered  himself  a  prisoner.  His  sword  was  return- 
ed; he  was  treated  with  all  honor;  and  a  few  days  after- 
ward he  was  sent  to  India,  where  a  residence  and  a  revenue 
were  assigned  to  him. 

But  the  withdrawal  of  Dost  Mahomed  from  the  scene  did 
nothing  to  secure  the  reign  of  the  unfortunate  Shah  Soojah. 
The  Shah  was  hated  on  his  own  account.  He  was  regarded 
as  a  traitor  who  had  sold  his  country  to  the  foreigners.  In- 
surrections began  to  be  chronic.  They  were  going  on  in  the 
very  midst  of  Cabul  itself.  Sir  W.  Macnaghten  was  warned 
of  danger,  but  seemed  to  take  no  heed.  Some  fatal  blind- 
ness appears  to  have  suddenly  fallen  on  the  eyes  of  our  peo- 
ple in  Cabul.  On  November  2d,  1841,  an  insurrection  broke 
out.  Sir  Alexander  Burnes  lived  in  the  city  itself;  Sir  W. 
Macnaghten  and  the  military  commander,  Major-general 
Elphinstone,  were  in  cantonments  at  some  little  distance. 
The  insurrection  might  have  been  put  down  in  the  first  in- 
stance with  hardly  the  need  even  of  Napoleon's  famous 
"  whiff  of  grape-shot."  But  it  was  allowed  to  grow  up  with- 
out attempt  at  control.  Sir  Alexander  Burnes  could  not 
be  got  to  believe  that  it  was  anything  serious,  even  when 
a  fanatical  and  furious  mob  were  besieging  his  own  house. 
The  fanatics  were  especially  bitter  against  Burnes,  because 
they  believed  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  treachery.  They 
accused  him  of  having  pretended  to  be  the  friend  of  Dost 
Mahomed,  deceived  him,  and  brought  the  English  into  the 
country.  How  entirely  innocent  of  this  charge  Burnes  was 
we  all  now  know ;  but  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  there 
was  much  in  the  external  aspect  of  events  to  excuse  such  a 
suspicion  in  the  mind  of  an  infuriated  Afghan.  To  the  last 
Burnes  refused  to  believe  that  he  was  in  danger.  He  had 
always  been  a  friend  to  the  Afghans,  he  said,  and  he  could 
have  nothing  to  fear.  It  was  true.  He  had  always  been 
the  sincere  friend  of  the  Afghans.  It  was  his  misfortune, 
and  the  heavy  fault  of  his  superiors,  that  he  had  been  made 
to  appear  as  an  enemy  of  the  Afghans.  He  had  now  to  pay 
a  heavy  penalty  for  the  errors  and  the  wrong-doing  of  oth- 
ers. He  harangued  the  raging  mob,  and  endeavored  to  bring 
them  to  reason.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  understood,  up 


162  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

to  the  very  last  moment,  that  by  reminding  them  that  he 
was  Alexander  Burnes,  their  old  friend,  he  was  only  giving 
them  a  new  reason  for  demanding  his  life.  He  was  murder- 
ed in  the  tumult.  He  and  his  brother  and  all  those  with 
them  were  hacked  to  pieces  with  Afghan  knives.  He  was 
only  in  his  thirty-seventh  year  when  he  was  murdered.  He 
was  the  first  victim  of  the  policy  which  had  resolved  to  in- 
tervene in  the  affairs  of  Afghanistan.  Fate  seldom  showed 
with  more  strange  and  bitter  malice  her  proverbial  irony 
than  when  she  made  him  the  first  victim  of  the  policy  adopt- 
ed in  despite  of  his  best  advice  and  his  strongest  warnings. 

The  murder  of  Burnes  was  not  a  climax ;  it  was  only  a 
beginning.  The  English  troops  were  quartered  in  canton- 
ments outside  the  city,  and  at  some  little  distance  from  it. 
These  cantonments  were,  in  any  case  of  real  difficulty,  prac- 
tically indefensible.  The  popular  monarch,  the  darling  of 
his  people,  whom  we  had  restored  to  his  throne,  was  in  the 
Balla  Hissar,  or  citadel  of  Cabul.  From  the  moment  when 
the  insurrection  broke  out  he  may  be  regarded  as  a  prisoner 
or  a  besieged  man  there.  He  was  as  utterly  unable  to  help 
our  people  as  they  were  to  help  him.  The  whole  country 
threw  itself  into  insurrection  against  him  and  us.  The  Af- 
ghans attacked  the  cantonments,  and  actually  compelled  the 
English  to  abandon  the  forts  in  which  all  our  commissariat 
was  stored.  We  were  thus  threatened  with  famine,  even 
if  we  could  resist  the  enemy  in  arms.  We  were  strangely 
unfortunate  in  our  civil  and  military  leaders.  Sir  W.  Mac- 
naghten  was  a  man  of  high  character  and  good  purpose, 
but  he  was  weak  and  credulous.  The  commander,  General 
Elphinstone,  was  old,  infirm,  tortured  by  disease,  broken 
down  both  in  mind  and  body,  incapable  of  forming  a  pur- 
pose of  his  own,  or  of  holding  to  one  suggested  by  anybody 
else.  His  second  in  command  was  a  far  stronger  and  abler 
man,  but  unhappily  the  two  could  never  agree.  "  They  were 
both  of  them,"  says  Sir  J.  W.  Kaye,  "  brave  men.  In  any 
other  situation,  though  the  physical  infirmities  of  the  one 
and  the  cankered  vanity,  the  dogmatical  perverseness  of  the 
other,  might  have  in  some  measure  detracted  from  their  ef- 
ficiency as  military  commanders,  I  believe  they  would  have 
exhibited  sufficient  courage  and  constancy  to  rescue  an  army 
from  utter  destruction,  and  the  British  name  from  indelible 


THE  DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  163 

reproach.  But  in  the  Cabul  cantonments  they  were  miser- 
ably out  of  place.  They  seem  to  have  been  sent  there,  by 
superhuman  intervention,  to  work  out  the  utter  ruin  and 
prostration  of  an  unholy  policy  by  ordinary  human  means." 
One  fact  must  be  mentioned  by  an  English  historian — one 
which  an  English  historian  has  happily  not  often  to  record. 
It  is  certain  that  an  officer  in  our  service  entered  into  nego- 
tiations for  the  murder  of  the  insurgent  chiefs,  who  were 
our  worst  enemies.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  he  be- 
lieved in  doing  so  he  was  acting  as  Sir  W.  Macnaghten 
would  have  had  him  do.  Sir  W.  Macnaghten  was  innocent 
of  any  complicity  in  such  a  plot,  and  was  incapable  of  it. 
But  the  negotiations  were  opened  and  carried  on  in  his  name. 
A  new  figure  appeared  on  the  scene,  a  dark  and  a  fierce 
apparition.  This  was  Akbar  Khan,  the  favorite  son  of  Dost 
Mahomed.  He  was  a  daring,  a  clever,  an  unscrupulous 
young  man.  From  the  moment  when  he  entered  Cabul  he 
became  the  real  leader  of  the  insurrection  against  Shah  Soo- 
jah  and  us.  Macnaghten,  persuaded  by  the  military  com- 
mander that  the  position  of  things  was  hopeless,  consented 
to  enter  into  negotiations  with  Akbar  Khan.  Before  the 
arrival  of  the  latter  the  chiefs  of  the  insurrection  had  offer- 
ed us  terms  which  made  the  ears  of  our  envoy  tingle.  Such 
terms  had  not  often  been  even  suggested  to  British  soldiers 
before.  They  were  simply  unconditional  surrender.  Mac- 
naghten indignantly  rejected  them.  Everything  went  wrong 
with  him,  however.  We  were  beaten  again  and  again  by 
the  Afghans.  Our  officers  never  faltered  in  their  duty;  but 
the  melancholy  truth  has  to  be  told  that  the  men,  most  of 
whom  were  Asiatics,  at  last  began  to  lose  heart  and  would 
not  fight  the  enemy.  So  the  envoy  was  compelled  to  enter 
into  terms  with  Akbar  Khan  and  the  other  chiefs.  Akbar 
Khan  received  him  at  first  with  contemptuous  insolence — as 
a  haughty  conqueror  receives  some  ignoble  and  humiliated 
adversary.  It  was  agreed  that  the  British  troops  should 
quit  Afghanistan  at  once;  that  Dost  Mahomed  and  his  fam- 
ily should  be  sent  back  to  Afghanistan  ;  that  on  his  return 
the  unfortunate  Shah  Soojah  should  be  allowed  to  take  him- 
self off  to  India  or  where  he  would  ;  and  that  some  British 
officers  should  be  left  at  Cabul  as  hostages  for  the  fulfilment 
of  the  conditions. 


164  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

The  evacuation  did  not  take  place  at  once,  although  the 
fierce  winter  was  setting  in,  and  the  snow  was  falling  heav- 
ily, ominously.  Macnaghten  seems  to  have  had  still  some 
lingering  hopes  that  something  would  turn  up  to  relieve 
him  from  the  shame  of  quitting  the  country  ;  and  it  must 
be  owned  that  he  does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  intention 
of  carrying  out  the  terms  of  the  agreement  if  by  any  chance 
he  could  escape  from  them.  On  both  sides  there  were  dal- 
lyings  and  delays.  At  last  Akbar  Khan  made  a  new  and 
startling  proposition  to  our  envoy.  It  was  that  they  two 
should  enter  into  a  secret  treaty,  should  unite  their  arms 
against  the  other  chiefs,  and  should  keep  Shah  Soojah  on 
the  throne  as  nominal  king,  with  Akbar  Khan  as  his  vizier. 
Macnaghten  caught  at  the  proposals.  He  had  entered  into 
terms  of  negotiation  with  the  Afghan  chiefs  together ;  he 
now  consented  to  enter  into  a  secret  treaty  with  one  of  the 
chiefs  to  turn  their  joint  arms  against  the  others.  It  would 
be  idle  and  shameful  to  attempt  to  defend  such  a  policy. 
We  can  only  excuse  it  by  considering  the  terrible  circum- 
stances of  Macnaghten's  position,  the  manner  in  which  his 
nerves  and  moral  fibre  had  been  shaken  and  shattered  by 
calamities,  and  his  doubts  whether  he  could  place  any  reli- 
ance on  the  promises  of  the  chiefs.  He  had  apparently  sunk 
into  that  condition  of  mind  which  Macaulay  tells  us  that 
Clive  adopted  so  readily  in  his  dealings  with  Asiatics,  and 
under  the  influence  of  which  men  naturalty  honorable  and 
high-minded  come  to  believe  that  it  is  right  to  act  treacher- 
ously with  those  whom  we  believe  to  be  treacherous.  All 
this  is  but  excuse,  and  rather  poor  excuse.  When  it  has  all 
been  said  and  thought  of,  we  must  still  be  glad  to  believe 
that  there  are  not  many  Englishmen  who  would,  under  any 
circumstances,  have  consented  even  to  give  a  hearing  to  the 
proposals  of  Akbar  Khan. 

Whatever  Macnaghten's  error,  it  was  dearly  expiated. 
He  went  out  at  noon  next  day  to  confer  with  Akbar  Khan 
on  the  banks  of  the  neighboring  river.  Three  of  his  officers 
were  with  him.  Akbar  Khan  was  ominously  surrounded 
by  friends  and  retainers.  These  kept  pressing  round  the 
unfortunate  envoy.  Some  remonstrance  was  made  by  one 
of  the  English  officers,  but  Akbar  Khan  said  it  was  of  no 

O  ' 

consequence,  as   they  were  all  in   the   secret.     Not  many 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  165 

words  were  spoken  ;  the  expected  conference  had  hardly 
begun  when  a  signal  was  given  or  an  order  issued  by  Akbar 
Khan,  and  the  envoy  and  the  officers  were  suddenly  seized 
from  behind.  A  scene  of  wild  confusion  followed,  in  which 
hardly  anything  is  clear  and  certain  but  the  one  most  horri- 
ble incident.  The  envoy  struggled  with  Akbar  Khan,  who 
had  himself  seized  Macnaghten  ;  Akbar  Khan  drew  from  his 
belt  one  of  a  pair  of  pistols  which  Macnaghten  had  present- 
ed to  him  a  short  time  before,  and  shot  him  through  the 
body.  The  fanatics  who  were  crowding  round  hacked  the 
body  to  pieces  with  their  knives.  Of  the  three  officers  one 
was  killed  on  the  spot ;  the  other  two  were  forced  to  mount 
Afghan  horses  and  carried  away  as  prisoners. 

At  first  this  horrid  deed  of  treachery  and  blood  shows 
like  that  to  which  Clearchus  and  his  companions,  the  chiefs 
of  the  famous  ten  thousand  Greeks,  fell  victims  at  the  hands 
of  Tissaphernes,  the  Persian  satrap.  But  it  seems  certain 
that  the  treachery  of  Akbar,  base  as  it  was,  did  not  contem- 
plate more  than  the  seizure  of  the  envoy  and  his  officers. 
There  were  jealousies  and  disputes  among  the  chiefs  of  the 
insurrection.  One  of  them,  in  especial,  had  got  his  mind 
filled  with  the  conviction,  inspired,  no  doubt,  by  the  unfort- 
unate and  unparalleled  negotiation  already  mentioned,  that 
the  envoy  had  offered  a  price  for  his  head.  Akbar  Khan 
was  accused  by  him  of  being  a  secret  friend  of  the  envoy 
and  the  English.  Akbar  Khan's  father  was  a  captive  in  the 
hands  of  the  English,  and  it  may  have  been  thought  that  on 
his  account  and  for  personal  purposes  Akbar  was  favoring 
the  envoy,  and  even  intriguing  with  him.  Akbar  offered 
to  prove  his  sincerity  by  making  the  envoy  a  captive  and 
handing  him  over  to  the  chiefs.  This  was  the  treacherous 
plot  which  he  strove  to  carry  out  by  entering  into  the  se- 
cret negotiations  with  the  easily -deluded  envoy.  On  the 
fatal  day  the  latter  resisted  and  struggled ;  Akbar  Khan 
heard  a  cry  of  alarm  that  the  English  soldiers  were  coming 
out  of  the  cantonments  to  rescue  the  envoy  ;  and,  wild  with 
passion,  he  suddenly  drew  his  pistol  and  fired.  This  was 
the  statement  made  again  and  again  by  Akbar  Khan  him- 
self. It  does  not  seem  an  improbable  explanation  for  what 
otherwise  looks  a  murder  as  stupid  and  purposeless  as  it  was 
brutal.  The  explanation  does  not  much  relieve  the  dark- 


166  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ness  of  Akbar  Khan's  character.  It  is  given  here  as  histo- 
ry, not  as  exculpation.  There  is  not  the  slightest  reason 
to  suppose  that  Akbar  Khan  would  have  shrunk  from  any 
treachery  or  any  cruelty  which  served  his  purpose.  His 
own  explanation  of  his  purpose  in  this  instance  shows  a  de- 
gree of  treachery  which  could  hardly  be  surpassed  even  in 
the  East.  But  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  suspicion 
of  perfidy  under  which  the  English  envoy  labored,  and 
which  was  the  main  impulse  of  Akbar  Khan's  movement, 
had  evidence  enough  to  support  it  in  the  eyes  of  suspicious 
enemies ;  and  that  poor  Macnaghten  would  not  have  been 
murdered  had  he  not  consented  to  meet  Akbar  Khan  and 
treat  with  him  on  a  proposition  to  which  an  English  official 
should  never  have  listened. 

A  terrible  agony  of  suspense  followed  among  the  little 
English  force  in  the  cantonments.  The  military  chiefs  after- 
ward stated  that  they  did  not  know  until  the  following  day 
that  any  calamity  had  befallen  the  envoy.  But  a  keen  sus- 
picion ran  through  the  cantonments  that  some  fearful  deed 
had  been  done.  No  step  was  taken  to  avenge  the  death  of 
Macnaghten,  even  when  it  became  known  that  his  hacked 
and  mangled  body  had  been  exhibited  in  triumph  all  through 
the  streets  and  bazars  of  Cabul.  A  paralysis  seemed  to 
have  fallen  over  the  councils  of  our  military  chiefs.  On 
December  24th,  1841,  came  a  letter  from  one  of  the  officers 
seized  by  Akbar  Khan,  accompanying  proposals  for  a  treaty 
from  the  Afghan  chiefs.  It  is  hard  now  to  understand  how 
any  English  officers  could  have  consented  to  enter  into 
terms  with  the  murderers  of  Macnaghten  before  his  mangled 
body  could  well  have  ceased  to  bleed.  It  is  strange  that  it 
did  not  occur  to  most  of  them  that  there  was  an  alternative; 
that  they  were  not  ordered  by  fate  to  accept  whatever  the 
conquerors  chose  to  offer.  We  can  all  see  the  difficulty  of 
their  position.  General  Elphinstone  and  his  second  in  com- 
mand, Brigadier  Shelton,  were  convinced  that  it  would  be 
equally  impossible  to  stay  where  they  were  or  to  cut  their 
way  through  the  Afghans.  But  it  might  have  occurred  to 
many  that  they  were  nevertheless  not  bound  to  treat  with 
the  Afghans.  They  might  have  remembered  the  famous  an- 
swer of  the  father  in  Corneille's  immortal  drama,  who  is 
asked  what  his  son  could  have  done  but  yield  in  the  face  of 


THE  DISASTERS  OF  CABUL.  167 

such  odds,  and  exclaims  in  generous  passion  that  he  could 
have  died.  One  English  officer  of  mark  did  counsel  his 
superiors  in  this  spirit.  This  was  Major  Eldred  Pottinger, 
whose  skill  and  courage  in  the  defence  of  Herat  we  have 
already  mentioned.  Pottinger  was  for  cutting  their  way 
through  all  enemies  and  difficulties  as  far  as  they  could,  and 
then  occupying  the  ground  with  their  dead  bodies.  But  his 
advice  was  hardly  taken  into  consideration.  It  was  deter- 
mined to  treat  with  the  Afghans;  and  treating  with  the  Af- 
ghans now  meant  accepting  any  terms  the  Afghans  chose 
to  impose  on  their  fallen  enemies.  In  the  negotiations  that 
went  on  some  written  documents  were  exchanged.  One  of 
these,  drawn  up  by  the  English  negotiators,  contains  a  short 
sentence  which  we  believe  to  be  absolutely  unique  in  the 
history  of  British  dealings  with  armed  enemies.  It  is  an  ap- 
peal to  the  Afghan  conquerors  not  to  be  too  hard  upon  the 
vanquished ;  not  to  break  the  bruised  reed.  "  In  friendship, 
kindness  and  consideration  are  necessary,  not  overpowering 
the  weak  with  sufferings !"  In  friendship ! — we  appealed  to 
the  friendship  of  Macnaghten's  murderers;  to  the  friendship, 
in  any  case,  of  the  man  whose  father  we  had  dethroned  and 
driven  into  exile.  Not  overpowering  the  weak  with  suffer- 
ings !  The  weak  were  the  English !  One  might  fancy  he 
was  reading  the  plaintive  and  piteous  appeal  of  some  forlorn 
and  feeble  tribe  of  helpless  half-breeds  for  the  mercy  of  arro- 
gant and  mastering  rulers.  "  Suffolk's  imperious  tongue  is 
stern  and  rough,"  says  one  in  Shakspeare's  pages,  when  he 
is  bidden  to  ask  for  consideration  at  the  hands  of  captors 
whom  he  is  no  longer  able  to  resist.  The  tongue  with  which 
the  English  force  at  Cabul  addressed  the  Afghans  was  not 

o  o 

imperious  or  stern  or  rough.  It  was  bated,  mild,  and  plain- 
tive. Only  the  other  day,  it  would  seem,  these  men  had 
blown  up  the  gates  of  Ghuznee,  and  rushed  through  the 
dense  smoke  and  the  falling  ruins  to  attack  the  enemy  hand 
to  hand.  Only  the  other  day  our  envoy  had  received  in  sur- 
render the  bright  sword  of  Dost  Mahomed.  Now  the  same 
men  who  had  seen  these  things  could  only  plead  for  a  little 
gentleness  of  consideration,  and  had  no  thought  of  resistance, 
and  did  not  any  longer  seem  to  know  how  to  die. 

We  accepted  the  terms  of  treaty  offered  to  us.     Nothing 
else  could  be  done  by  men  who  were  not  prepared  to  adopt 


168  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

the  advice  of  the  heroic  father  in  Corneille.  The  English 
were  at  once  to  take  themselves  off  out  of  Afghanistan,  giv- 
ing up  all  their  guns  except  six,  which  they  were  allowed  to 
retain  for  their  necessary  defence  in  their  mournful  journey 
home;  they  were  to  leave  behind  all  the  treasure,  and  to 
guarantee  the  payment  of  something  additional  for  the  safe- 
conduct  of  the  poor  little  army  to  Peshawur  or  to  Jellala- 
bad ;  and  they  were  to  hand  over  six  officers  as  hostages  for 
the  due  fulfilment  of  the  conditions.  It  is  of  course  under- 
stood that  the  conditions  included  the  immediate  release  of 
Dost  Mahomed  and  his  family  and  their  return  to  Afghanis- 
tan. When  these  should  return,  the  six  hostages  were  to  be 
released.  Only  one  concession  had  been  obtained  from  the 
conquerors.  It  was  at  first  demanded  that  some  of  the  mar- 
ried ladies  should  be  left  as  hostages;  but  on  the  urgent 
representations  of  the  English  officers  this  condition  was 
waived — at  least  for  the  moment.  When  the  treaty  was 
signed,  the  officers  who  had  been  seized  when  Macnaghten 
was  murdered  were  released. 

It  is  worth  mentioning  that  these  officers  were  not  badly 
treated  by  Akbar  Khan  while  they  were  in  his  power.  On 
the  contrary,  he  had  to  make  strenuous  efforts,  and  did  make 
them  in  good  faith,  to  save  them  from  being  murdered  by 
bands  of  his  fanatical  followers.  One  of  the  officers  has 
himself  described  the  almost  desperate  efforts  which  Akbar 
Khan  had  to  make  to  save  him  from  the  fury  of  the  mob, 
who  thi'onged  thirsting  for  the  blood  of  the  Englishman  up 
to  the  very  stirrup  of  their  young  chief.  "Akbar  Khan," 
says  this  officer,  "  at  length  drew  his  sword  and  laid  about 
him  right  manfully  "  in  defence  of  his  prisoner.  When,  how- 
ever, he  had  got  the  latter  into  a  place  of  safety,  the  impet- 
uous young  Afghan  chief  could  not  restrain  a  sneer  at  his 
captive  and  the  cause  his  captive  represented.  Turning  to 
the  English  officer,  he  said  more  than  once,  "in  a  tone  of 
triumphant  derision,"  some  words  such  as  these:  "So  you 
are  the  man  who  came  here  to  seize  my  country  ?"  It  must 
be  owned  that  the  condition  of  things  gave  bitter  meaning 
to  the  taunt,  if  they  did  not  actually  excuse  it.  At  a  later 
period  of  this  melancholy  story  it  is  told  by  Lady  Sale  that 
crowds  of  the  fanatical  Ghilzyes  were  endeavoring  to  per- 
suade Akbar  Khan  to  slaughter  all  the  English,  and  that 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  169 

when  he  tried  to  pacify  them  they  said  that  when  Bnrnes 
came  into  the  country  they  entreated  Akbar  Khan's  father 
to  have  Burnes  killed,  or  he  would  go  back  to  Hindostan, 
and  on  some  future  day  return  and  bring  an  army  with  him, 
"  to  take  our  country  from  us ;"  and  all  the  calamities  had 
come  upon  them  because  Dost  Mahomed  would  not  take 
their  advice.  Akbar  Khan  either  was  or  pretended  to  be 
moderate.  Pie  might,  indeed,  safely  put  on  an  air  of  mag- 
nanimity. His  enemies  were  doomed.  It  needed  no  com- 
mand from  him  to  decree  their  destruction. 

The  withdrawal  from  Cabul  began.  It  was  the  heart  of 
a  cruel  winter.  The  English  had  to  make  their  way  through 
the  awful  pass  of  Koord  Cabul.  This  stupendous  gorge 
runs  for  some  five  miles  between  mountain  ranges  so  narrow, 
lofty,  and  grim,  that  in  the  winter  season  the  rays  of  the  sun 
can  hardly  pierce  its  darkness  even  at  the  noontide.  Down 
the  centre  dashed  a  precipitous  mountain  torrent  so  fiercely 
that  the  stern  frost  of  that  terrible  time  could  not  stay  its 
course.  The  snow  lay  in  masses  on  the  ground  ;  the  rocks 
and  stones  that  raised  their  heads  above  the  snow  in  the 
way  of  the  unfortunate  travellers  were  slippery  with  frost- 
Soon  the  white  snow  began  to  be  stained  and  splashed  with 
blood.  Fearful  as  this  Koord  Cabul  Pass  was,  it  was  only  a 
degree  worse  than  the  road  which  for  two  Avhole  days  the 
English  had  to  traverse  to  reach  it.  The  army  which  set 
out  from  Cabul  numbered  more  than  four  thousand  fighting 
men — of  whom  Europeans,  it  should  be  said,  formed  but  a 
small  proportion — and  some  twelve  thousand  camp  followers 
of  all  kinds.  There  were  also  many  women  and  children. 
Lady  Macnaghten,  widow  of  the  murdered  envoy;  Lady 
Sale,  whose  gallant  husband  was  holding  Jellalabad,  at  the 
near  end 'of  the  Khyber  Pass,  toward  the  Indian  frontier; 
Mrs.  Sturt,  her  daughter,  soon  to  be  widowed  by  the  death 
of  her  young  husband;  Mrs.  Trevor  and  her  seven  children, 
and  many  other  pitiable  fugitives.  The  winter  journey 
would  have  been  cruel  and  dangerous  enough  in  time  of 
peace;  but  this  journey  had  to  be  accomplished  in  the  midst 
of  something  far  worse  than  common  war.  At  every  step 
of  the  road,  every  opening  of  the  rocks,  the  unhappy  crowd 
of  confused  and  heterogeneous  fugitives  were  beset  by  bands 
of  savage  fanatics,  who  with  their  long  guns  and  long  knives 

I.— 8 


170  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

were  murdering  all  they  could  reach.  It  was  all  the  way 
a  confused  constant  battle  against  a  guerilla  enemy  of  the 
most  furious  and  merciless  temper,  who  were  perfectly  fa- 
miliar with  the  ground,  and  could  rush  forward  and  retire 
exactly  as  suited  their  tactics.  The  English  soldiers,  weary, 
weak,  and  crippled  by  frost,  could  make  but  a  poor  fight 
against  the  savage  Afghans.  "It  was  no  longer,"  says  Sir 
J.  W.  Kaye,  "  a  retreating  army;  it  Avas  a  rabble  in  chaotic 
flight."  Men,  women,  and  children,  horses,  ponies,  camels, 
the  wounded,  the  dying,  the  dead,  all  crowded  together  in 
almost  inextricable  confusion  among  the  snow  and  amidst  the 
relentless  enemies.  "The  massacre" — to  quote  again  from 
Sir  J.  W.  Kaye,  "  was  fearful  in  this  Koord  Cabul  Pass. 
Three  thousand  men  are  said  to  have  fallen  under  the  fire  of 
the  enemy,  or  to  have  dropped  down  paralyzed  and  exhaust- 
ed to  be  slaughtered  by  the  Afghan  knives.  And  amidst 
these  fearful  scenes  of  carnage,  through  a  shower  of  match- 
lock balls,  rode  English  ladies  on  horseback  or  in  camel-pan- 
niers, sometimes  vainly  endeavoring  to  keep  their  children 
beneath  their  eyes,  and  losing  them  in  the  confusion  and  be- 
wilderment of  the  desolating  march." 

Was  it  for  this,  then,  that  our  troops  had  been  induced  to 
capitulate?  Was  this  the  safe-conduct  which  the  Afghan 
chiefs  had  promised  in  return  for  their  accepting  the  igno- 
minious conditions  imposed  on  them?  Some  of  the  chiefs 
did  exert  themselves  to  their  utmost  to  protect  the  unfort- 
unate English.  It  is  not  certain  what  the  real  wish  of 
Akbar  Khan  may  have  been.  He  protested  that  he  had  no 
power  to  restrain  the  hordes  of  fanatical  Ghilzyes  whose 
own  immediate  chiefs  had  not  authority  enough  to  keep 
them  from  murdering  the  English  whenever  they  got  a 
chance.  The  force  of  some  few  hundred  horsemen  whom 
Akbar  Khan  had  with  him  were  utterly  incapable,  he  de- 
clared, of  maintaining  order  among  such  a  mass  of  infuriated 
and  lawless  savages.  Akbar  Khan  constantly  appeared  on 
the  scene  during  this  journey  of  terror.  At  every  opening 
or  break  of  the  long  straggling  flight  he  and  his  little  band 
of  followers  showed  themselves  on  the  horizon  :  trying  still 
to  protect  the  English  from  utter  ruin,  as  he  declared  ;  come 
to  gloat  over  their  misery,  and  to  see  th.it  it  was  surely  ac- 
complished, some  of  the  unhappy  English  were  ready  to  be- 


THE   DISASTERS  OF  CABUL.  171 

lieve.  Yet  his  presence  was  something  that  seemed  to  give 
a  hope  of  protection.  Akbar  Khan  at  length  startled  the 
English  by  a  proposal  that  the  women  and  children  who 
were  with  the  army  should  be  handed  over  to  his  custody 
to  be  conveyed  by  him  in  safety  to  Peshawar.  There  was 
nothing  better  to  be  done.  The  only  modification  of  his  re- 
quest, or  command,  that  could  be  obtained  was  that  the  hus- 
bands of  the  married  ladies  should  accompany  their  wives. 
With  this  agreement  the  women  and  children  were  handed 
over  to  the  care  of  this  dreaded  enemy,  and  Lady  Mac- 
naghten  had  to  undergo  the  agony  of  a  personal  interview 
with  the  man  whose  own  hand  had  killed  her  husband. 
Few  scenes  in  poetry  or  romance  can  surely  be  more  thrill- 
ing with  emotion  than  such  a  meeting  as  this  must  have 
been.  Akbar  Khan  was  kindly  in  his  language,  and  de- 
clared to  the  unhappy  widow  that  lie  would  give  his  right 
arm  to  undo,  if  it  were  possible,  the  deed  that  he  had  done. 

The  women  and  children  and  the  married  men  whose  wives 
were  among  this  party  were  taken  from  the  unfortunate 
army  and  placed  under  the  care  of  Akbar  Khan.  As  events 
turned  out,  this  proved  a  fortunate  thing  for  them.  But 
in  any  case  it  was  the  best  thing  that  could  be  done.  Not 
one  of  these  women  and  children  could  have  lived  through 
the  horrors  of  the  journey  which  lay  before  the  remnant  of 
what  had  once  been  a  British  force.  The  march  was  re- 
sumed ;  new  horrors  set  in  ;  new  heaps  of  corpses  stained  the 
snow ;  and  then  Akbar  Khan  presented  himself  with  a  fresh 
proposition.  In  the  treaty  made  at  Cabul  between  the  Eng- 
lish authorities  and  the  Afghan  chiefs  there  was  an  article 
which  stipulated  that  "  the  English  force  at  Jellalabad  shall 
march  for  Peshawar  before  the  Cabul  army  arrives,  and  shall 
not  delay  on  the  road."  Akbar  Khan  was  especially  anx- 
ious to  get  rid  of  the  little  army  at  Jellalabad,  at  the  near 
end  of  the  Khyber  Pass.  He  desired  above  all  things  that 
it  should  be  on  the  march  home  to  India;  either  that  it 
might  be  out  of  his  way,  or  that  he  might  have  a  chance  of 
destroying  it  on  its  way.  It  was  in  great  measure  as  a  se- 
curity for  its  moving  that  he  desired  to  have  the  women 
and  children  under  his  care.  It  is  not  likely  that  he  meant 
any  harm  to  the  women  and  children  ;  it  must  be  remember- 
ed that  his  father  and  many  of  the  women  of  his  family  were 


172  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

under  the  control  of  the  British  Government  as  prisoners  in 
Hindostan.  But  he  fancied  that  if  he  had  the  English  worn- 

O 

en  in  his  hands  the  army  at  Jellalabad  could  not  refuse  to 
obey  the  condition  set  down  in  the  article  of  the  treaty. 
Now  that  he  had  the  women  in  his  power,  however,  he  de- 
manded other  guarantees  with  openly  acknowledged  pur- 
pose of  keeping  these  latter  until  Jellalabad  should  have 
been  evacuated.  He  demanded  that  General  Elphinstone, 
the  commander,  with  his  second  in  command,  and  also  one 
other  officer,  should  hand  themselves  over  to  him  as  host- 
ages. He  promised,  if  this  were  done,  to  exert  himself  more 
than  before  to  res-train  the  fanatical  tribes,  and  also  to  pro- 
vide the  army  in  the  Koord  Cabul  Pass  with  provisions. 
There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  submit;  and  the  English 
general  himself  became,  with  the  women  and  children,  a 
captive  in  the  hands  of  the  inexorable  enemy. 

Then  the  march  of  the  arrny,  without  a  general,  went  on 
again.  Soon  it  became  the  story  of  a  general  without  an 
army ;  before  very  long  there  was  neither  general  nor  army. 
It  is  idle  to  lengthen  a  tale  of  mere  horrors.  The  straggling 
remnant  of  an  array  entered  the  Jugdulluk  Pass — a  dark, 
steep,  narrow,  ascending  path  between  crags.  The  miserable 
toilers  found  that  the  fanatical,  implacable  tribes  had  bar- 
ricaded the  pass.  All  was  over.  The  army  of  Cabul  was 
finally  extinguished  in  that  barricaded  pass.  It  was  a  trap; 
the  British  were  taken  in  it.  A  few  mere  fugitives  escaped 
from  the  scene  of  actual  slaughter,  and  were  on  the  road  to 
Jellalabad,  where  Sale  and  his  little  army  were  holding  their 
own.  When  they  were  within  sixteen  miles  of  Jellalabad 
the  number  was  reduced  to  six.  Of  these  six,  five  were  kill- 
ed by  straggling  marauders  on  the  way.  One  man  alone 
reached  Jellalabad  to  tell  the  tale.  Literally  one  man,  Dr. 
Brydon,  came  to  Jellalabad  out  of  a  moving  host  which  had 
numbered  in  all  some  sixteen  thousand  when  it  set  out  on 
its  march.  The  curious  eye  will  search  through  history  or 
fiction  in  vain  for  any  picture  more  thrilling  with  the  sug- 
gestions of  an  awful  catastrophe  than  that  of  this  solitary 
survivor,  faint  and  reeling  on  his  jaded  horse,  as  he  appear- 
ed under  the  walls  of  Jellalabad,  to  bear  the  tidings  of  our 
Thermopyla3  of  pain  and  shame. 

This  is  the  crisis  of  the  story.     With  this,  at  least,  the 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  173 

worst  of  the  pain  and  shame  were  destined  to  end.  The 
rest  is  all,  so  far  as  we  are  concerned,  reaction  and  recovery. 
Our  successes  are  common  enough ;  we  may  tell  their  tale 
briefly  in  this  instance.  The  garrison  at  Jellalabad  had  re- 
ceived, before  Dr.  Brydon's  arrival,  an  intimation  that  they 
were  to  go  out  and  march  toward  India  in  accordance  with 
the  terms  of  the  treaty  extorted  from  Elphinstone  at  Cabul. 
They  very  properly  declined  to  be  bound  by  a  treaty  which, 
as  General  Sale  rightly  conjectured,  had  been  "  forced  from 
our  envoy  and  military  commander  with  the  knives  at  their 
throats."  General  Sale's  determination  was  clear  and  simple. 
"  I  propose  to  hold  this  place  on  the  part  of  Government  un- 
til I  receive  its  order  to  the  contrary."  This  resolve  of  Sale's 
was  really  the  turning-point  of  the  history.  Sale  held  Jellal- 
abad ;  Nott  was  at  Candahar.  Akbar  Khan  besieged  Jellal- 
abad. Nature  seemed  to  have  declared  herself  emphatical- 
ly on  his  side,  for  a  succession  of  earthquake  shocks  shattered 
the  walls  of  the  place,  and  produced  more  terrible  destruc- 
tion than  the  most  formidable  guns  of  modern  warfare  could 
have  done.  But  the  garrison  held  out  fearlessly ;  they  re- 
stored the  parapets,  re-established  every  battery,  re-trenched 
the  whole  of  the  gates,  and  built  up  all  the  breaches.  They 
resisted  every  attempt  of  Akbar  Khan  to  advance  upon  their 
works,  and  at  length,  when  it  became  certain  that  General 
Pollock  was  forcing  the  Khyber  Pass  to  come  to  their  relief, 
they  determined  to  attack  Akbar  Khan's  army ;  they  issued 
boldly  out  of  their  forts,  forced  a  battle  on  the  Afghan  chief, 
and  completely  defeated  him.  Before  Pollock,  having  gal- 
lantly fought  his  way  through  the  Khyber  Pass,  had  reach- 
ed Jellalabad,  the  beleaguering  army  had  been  entirely  de- 
feated and  dispersed.  General  Nott  at  Candahar  was  ready 
now  to  co-operate  with  General  Sale  and  General  Pollock  for 
any  movement  on  Cabul  which  the  authorities  might  advise 
or  sanction.  Meanwhile  the  unfortunate  Shah  Soojah,  whom 
we  had  restored  with  so  much  pomp  of  announcement  to  the 
throne  of  his  ancestors,  was  dead.  He  was  assassinated  in 
Cabul,  soon  after  the  depart in-e  of  the  British,  by  the  orders 
of  some  of  the  chiefs  who  detested  him;  and  his  body,  strip- 
ped of  its  royal  robes  and  its  many  jewels,  was  flung  into  a 
ditch.  Historians  quarrel  a  good  deal  over  the  question  of 
his  sincerity  and  fidelity  in  his  dealings  with  us.  It  is  not 


174  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

likely  that  an  Oriental  of  his  temperament  and  his  weakness 
could  have  been  capable  of  any  genuine  and  nnmixed  loyal- 
ty to  the  English  strangers.  It  seems  to  us  probable  enough 
that  he  may  at  important  moments  have  wavered  and  even 
faltered,  glad  to  take  advantage  of  any  movement  that  might 
safely  rid  him  of  us,  and  yet,  on  the  whole,  preferring  our 
friendship  and  our  protection  to  the  tender  mercies  which 
he  was  doomed  to  experience  when  our  troops  had  left  him. 
But  if  we  ask  concerning  his  gratitude  to  us,  it  may  be  well 
also  to  ask  what  there  was  in  our  conduct  toward  him  which 
called  for  any  enthusiastic  display  of  gratitude.  We  did  not 
help  him  out  of  any  love  for  him,  or  any  concern  for  the  jus- 
tice of  his  cause.  It  served  us  to  have  a  puppet,  and  we 
took  him  when  it  suited  us.  We  also  abandoned  him  when 
it  suited  us.  As  Lady  Teazle  proposes  to  do  with  honor  in 
her  conference  with  Joseph  Surface,  so  we  ought  to  do  with 
gratitude  in  discussing  the  merits  of  Shah  Soojah — leave  it 
out  of  the  question.  What  Shah  Soojah  owed  to  us  was  a 
few  weeks  of  idle  pomp  and  absurd  dreams,  a  bitter  awaken- 
ing, and  a  shameful  death. 

During  this  time  a  new  Governor-general  had  arrived  in 
India.  Lord  Auckland's  time  had  run  out,  and  during  its 
latter  months  he  had  become  nerveless  and  despondent  be- 
cause of  the  utter  failure  of  the  policy  which,  in  an  evil  hour 
for  himself  and  his  country,  he  had  been  induced  to  under- 
take. It  does  not  seem  that  it  ever  was  at  heart  a  policy 
of  his  own,  and  he  knew  that  the  East  India  Company  were 
altogether  opposed  to  it.  The  Company  were  well  aware  of 
the  vast  expense  which  our  enterprises  in  Afghanistan  must 
impose  on  the  revenues  of  India,  and  they  looked  forward 
eagerly  to  the  earliest  opportunity  of  bringing  it  to  a  close. 
Lord  Auckland  had  been  persuaded  into  adopting  it  against 
his  better  judgment,  and  against  even  the  whisperings  of 
his  conscience;  and  now  he  too  longed  to  be  done  with  it; 
but  he  wished  to  leave  Afghanistan  as  a  magnanimous  con- 
queror. He  had  in  his  own  person  discounted  the  honors  of 
victory.  He  had  received  an  earldom  for  the  sei'vices  he  was 
presumed  to  have  rendered  to  his  sovereign  and  his  country. 
He  had,  therefore,  in  full  sight  that  mournful  juxtaposition 
of  incongruous  objects  which  a  great  English  writer  has  de- 
scribed so  touchingly  and  tersely — the  trophies  of  victory 


THE  DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  175 

and  the  battle  lost.  He  was  an  honorable,  kindly  gentle- 
man, and  the  news  of  all  the  successive  calamities  fell  upon 
him  with  a  crushing,  an  overwhelming  weight.  In  plain 
language,  the  Governor-general  lost  his  head.  He  seemed 
to  have  no  other  idea  than  that  of  getting  all  our  troops  as 
quickly  as  might  be  out  of  Afghanistan,  and  shaking  the 
dust  of  the  place  off  our  feet  forever.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether,  if  we  had  pursued  such  a  policy  as  this,  we  might 
not  as  well  have  left  India  itself  once  for  all.  If  AVC  had  al- 
lowed it  to  seem  clear  to  the  Indian  populations  and  princes 
that  we  could  be  driven  out  of  Afghanistan  with  humiliation 
and  disaster,  and  that  we  were  unable  or  afraid  to  strike  one 
blow  to  redeem  our  military  credit,  we  should  before  long 
have  seen  in  Hindostan  many  an  attempt  to  enact  there  the 
scenes  of  Cabul  and  Candahar.  Unless  a  moralist  is  pre- 
pared to  say  that  a  nation  which  has  committed  one  error 
of  policy  is  bound  in  conscience  to  take  all  the  worst  and 
most  protracted  consequences  of  that  error,  and  never  make 
any  attempt  to  protect  itself  against  them,  even  a  moralist 
of  the  most  scrupulous  character  can  hardly  deny  that  we 
were  bound,  for  the  sake  of  our  interests  in  Europe  as  well 
as  in  India,  to  prove  that  our  strength  had  not  been  broken 
nor  our  counsels  paralyzed  by  the  disasters  in  Afghanistan. 
Yet  Lord  Auckland  does  not  appear  to  have  thought  any- 
thing of  the  kind  either  needful  or  within  the  compass  of 
our  national  strength.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  broken  man. 

His  successor  came  out  with  the  brightest  hopes  of  India 
and  the  world,  founded  on  his  energy  and  strength  of  mind. 
The  successor  was  Lord  Ellenborough,  the  son  of  that  Ed- 
ward Law,  afterward  Lord  Ellenborough,  Chief -justice  of 
the  King's  Bench,  who  had  been  leading  counsel  for  Warren 
Hastings  when  the  latter  was  impeached  before  the  House 
of  Lords..  The  second  Ellenborough  was,  at  the  time  of  his 
appointment,  filling  the  office  of  President  of  the  Board  of 
Control,  an  office  he  had  held  before.  He  was  therefore  well 
acquainted,  with  the  affairs  of  India.  He  had  come  into  of- 
fice under  Sir  Robert  Peel  on  the  resignation  of  the  Mel- 
bourne Ministry.  He  was  looked  upon  as  a  man  of  great 
ability  and  energy.  It  was  known  that  his  personal  predi- 
lections were  for  the  career  of  a  soldier.  He  was  fond  of 
telling  his  hearers  then  and  since  that  the  life  of  a  camp  was 


176  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

that  which  he  should  have  loved  to  lead.  He  was  a  man 
of  great  and,  in  certain  lights,  apparently  splendid  abilities. 
There  was  a  certain  Orientalism  about  his  language,  his  as- 
pirations, and  his  policy.  He  loved  gorgeousness  and  dra- 
matic— ill-natured  persons  said  theatric — effects.  Life  ar- 
ranged itself  in  his  eyes  as  a  superb  and  showy  pageant,  of 
which  it  would  have  been  his  ambition  to  form  the  central 
figure.  His  eloquence  was  often  of  a  lofty  and  noble  order. 
Men  who  are  still  hardly  of  middle  age  can  remember  Lord 
Ellenborough  on  great  occasions  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and 
can  recollect  their  having  been  deeply  impressed  by  him, 
even  though  they  had  but  lately  heard  such  speakers  as 
Gladstone  or  Bright  in  the  other  House.  It  was  not  easy, 
indeed,  sometimes  to  avoid  the  conviction  that  in  listening 
to  Lord  Ellenborough  one  was  listening  to  a  really  great 
orator  of  a  somewhat  antique  and  stately  type,  who  attuned 
his  speech  to  the  pitch  of  an  age  of  loftier  and  less  prosaic 
aims  than  ours.  When  he  had  a  great  question  to  deal  with, 
and  when  his  instincts,  if  not  his  reasoning  power,  had  put 
him  on  the  right  or  at  least  the  effective  side  of  it,  he  could 
speak  in  a  tone  of  poetic  and  elevated  eloquence  to  which  it 
was  impossible  to  listen  without  emotion.  But  if  Lord  El- 
lenborough was  in  some  respects  a  man  of  genius,  he  was 
also  a  man  whose  love  of  mere  effects  often  made  him  seem 
like  a  quack.  There  are  certain  characters  in  which  a  little 
of  unconscious  quackery  is  associated  with  some  of  the  ele- 
ments of  true  genius.  Lord  Ellenborough  was  one  of  these. 
Far  greater  men  than  he  must  be  associated  in  the  same  cat- 
egory. The  elder  Pitt,  the  first  Napoleon,  Mirabeau,  Boling- 
broke,  and  many  others,  were  men  in  whom  undoubtedly 
some  of  the  charlatan  was  mixed  up  with  some  of  the  very 
highest  qualities  of  genius.  In  Lord  Ellenborough  this 
blending  was  strongly  and  sometimes  even  startlingly  ap- 
parent. To  this  hour  there  are  men  who  knew  him  well  in 
public  and  private  on  whom  his  weaknesses  made  so  dispro- 
portionate an  impression  that  they  can  see  in  him  little  more 
than  a  mere  charlatan.  This  is  entirely  unjust.  He  was  a 
man  of  great  abilities  and  earnestness,  who  had  in  him  a 
strange  dash  of  the  play-actor,  who  at  the  most  serious  mo- 
ment of  emergency  always  thought  of  how  to  display  him- 
self effectively,  and  who  would  have  met  the  peril  of  an  em- 


THE   DISASTERS   OF   CABUL.  177 

pire,  as  poor  Narcissa  met  death,  with  an  overmastering  de- 
sire to  show  to  the  best  personal  advantage. 

Lord  Ellenborough's  appointment  was  hailed  by  all  par- 
ties in  India  as  the  most  auspicious  that  could  be  made. 
Here,  people  said,  is  surely  the  great  stage  for  a  great  act- 
or; and  now  the  great  actor  is  coming.  There  would  be 
something  fascinating  to  a  temper  like  his  in  the  thought 
of  redeeming  the  military  honor  of  his  country  and  standing 
out  in  history  as  the  avenger  of  the  shames  of  Cabul.  But 
those  who  thought  in  this  way  found  themselves  suddenly 
disappointed.  Lord  Ellenborough  uttered  and  wrote  a  few 
showy  sentences  about  revenging  our  losses  and  "  re-estab- 
lishing in  all  its  original  brilliancy  our  military  character." 
But  when  he  had  done  this  he  seemed  to  have  relieved  his 
mind  and  to  have  done  enough.  With  him  there  was  a  con- 
stant tendency  to  substitute  grandiose  phrases  for  deeds ; 
or  perhaps  to  think  that  the  phrase  was  the  thing  of  real 
moment.  He  said  these  fine  words,  and  then  at  once  he  an- 
nounced that  the  only  object  of  the  Government  was  to  get 
the  troops  out  of  Afghanistan  as  quickly  as  might  be,  and 
almost  on  any  terms.  The  whole  of  Lord  Ellenborough's 
conduct  during  this  crisis  is  inexplicable,  except  on  the  as- 
sumption that  he  really  did  not  know  at  certain  times  how 
to  distinguish  between  phrases  and  actions.  A  general  out- 
cry was  raised  in  India  and  among  the  troops  in  Afghanis- 
tan against  the  extraordinary  policy  which  Lord  Ellenbor- 
ough propounded.  Englishmen;  in  fact,  refused  to  believe  in 
it;  took  it  as  something  that  must  be  put  aside.  English 
soldiers  could  not  believe  that  they  were  to  be  recalled  after 
defeat;  they  persisted  in  the  conviction  that,  let  the  Gov- 
ernor-general say  what  he  might,  his  intention  must  be  that 
the  army  should  retrieve  its  fame  and  retire  only  after  com- 
plete victory.  The  Governor-general  himself  after  awhile 
quietly  acted  on  this  interpretation  of  his  meaning.  He  al- 
lowed the  military  commanders  in  Afghanistan  to  pull  their 
resources  together  and  prepare  for  inflicting  signal  chastise- 
ment on  the  enemy.  They  were  not  long  in  doing  this. 
They  encountered  the  enemy  wherever  he  showed  himself 
and  defeated  him.  They  recaptured  town  after  town,  until 
at  length,  on  September  15th,  1842,  General  Pollock's  force 
entered  Cabul.  A  few  days  after,  as  a  lasting  mark  of  retri- 

8* 


178  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

bution  for  the  crimes  which  had  been  committed  there,  the 
British  commander  ordered  the  destruction  of  the  great  ba- 
zar of  Cabul,  where  the  mangled  remains  of  the  unfortunate 
envoy  Macnaghten  had  been  exhibited  in  brutal  triumph  and 
joy  to  the  Afghan  populace. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  detailed  descriptions  of 
the  successful  progress  of  our  arms.  The  war  may  be  re- 
garded as  over.  It  is,  however,  necessary  to  say  something 
of  the  fate  of  the  captives,  or  hostages,  who  were  hurried 
away  that  terrible  January  night  at  the  command  of  Akbar 
Khan.  One  thing  has  first  to  be  told  which  some  may  now 
receive  with  incredulity,  but  which  is,  nevertheless,  true — 
there  was  a  British  general  who  was  disposed  to  leave  them 
to  their  fate  and  take  no  trouble  about  them,  and  who  de- 
clared himself  under  the  conviction,  from  the  tenor  of  all 
Lord  Ellenborough's  despatches,  that  the  recovery  of  the 
prisoners  was  "a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  Government." 
There  seems  to  have  been  some  unhappy  spell  working 
against  us  in  all  this  chapter  of  our  history,  by  virtue  of 
which  even  its  most  brilliant  pages  were  destined  to  have 
something  ignoble  or  ludicrous  written  on  them.  Better 
counsels,  however,  prevailed.  General  Pollock  insisted  on 
an  effort  being  made  to  recover  the  prisoners  before  the 
troops  began  to  return  to  India,  and  he  appointed  to  this 
noble  duty  the  husband  of  one  of  the  hostage  ladies  —  Sir 
Robert  Sale.  The  prisoners  were  recovered  with  greater 
ease  than  was  expected — so  many  of  them  as  were  yet  alive. 
Poor  General  Elphinstone  had  long  before  succumbed  to  dis- 
ease and  hardship.  The  ladies  had  gone  through  strange 
privations.  Thirty-six  years  ago  the  tale  of  the  captivity 
of  Lady  Sale  and  her  companions  was  in  every  mouth  all 
over  England;  nor  did  any  civilized  land  fail  to  take  an  in- 
terest in  the  strange  and  pathetic  story.  They  were  hur- 
ried from  fort  to  fort  as  the  designs  and  the  fortunes  of  Ak- 
bar Khan  dictated  his  disposal  of  them.  They  suffered  al- 
most every  fierce  alternation  of  cold  and  heat.  They  had 
to  live  on  the  coarsest  fare;  they  were  lodged  in  a  manner 
which  would  have  made  the  most  wretched  prison  accom- 
modation of  a  civilized  country  seem  luxurious  by  compari- 
son ;  they  were  in  constant  uncertainty  and  fear,  not  know- 
ing what  might  befall.  Yet  they  seem  to  have  held  up 


THE   DISASTERS  OF  CABUL.  179 

their  courage  and  spirits  wonderfully  well,  and  to  have  kept 
the  hearts  of  the  children  alive  with  mirth  and  sport  at  mo- 
ments of  the  utmost  peril.  Gradually  it  became  more  and 
more  suspected  that  the  fortunes  of  Akbar  Khan  were  fall- 
ing. At  last  it  was  beyond  doubt  that  he  had  been  com- 
pletely defeated.  Then  they  were  hurried  away  again,  they 
knew  not  whither,  through  ever-ascending  mountain-passes, 
under  a  scorching  sun.  They  were  being  carried  off  to  the 
wild,  rugged  regions  of  the  Indian  Caucasus.  They  were 
bestowed  in  a  miserable  fort  at  Bameean.  They  were  now 
under  the  charge  of  one  of  Akbar  Khan's  soldiers  of  fortune. 
This  man  had  begun  to  suspect  that  things  were  well-nigh 
hopeless  with  Akbar  Khan.  He  was  induced  by  gradual 
and  very  cautious  approaches  to  enter  into  an  agreement 
with  the  prisoners  for  their  release.  The  English  officers 
signed  an  agreement  with  him  to  secure  him  a  large  reward 
and  a  pension  for  life  if  he  enabled  them  to  escape.  He 
accordingly  declared  that  he  renounced  his  allegiance  to 
Akbar  Khan  ;  all  the  more  readily  seeing  that  news  came  in 
of  the  chief's  total  defeat  and  flight,  no  one  knew  whither. 
The  prisoners  and  their  escort,  lately  their  jailer  and  guards, 
set  forth  on  their  way  to  General  Pollock's  camp.  On  their 
way  they  met  the  English  parties  sent  out  to  seek  for  them. 
Sir  Robert  Sale  found  his  wife  again.  "Our  joy,"  says  one 
of  the  rescued  prisoners,  "  was  too  great,  too  overwhelming, 
for  tongue  to  utter."  Description,  indeed,  could  do  nothing 
for  the  effect  of  such  a  meeting  but  to  spoil  it. 

There  is  a  very  different  ending  to  the  episode  of  the 
English  captives  in  Bokhara.  Colonel  Stoddart,  who  had 
been  sent  to  the  Persian  camp  in  the  beginning  of  all  these 
events  to  insist  that  Persia  must  desist  from  the  siege  of 
Herat,  was  sent  subsequently  on  a  mission  to  the  Ameer  of 
Bokhara.  The  Ameer  received  him  favorably  at  first,  but 
afterward  became  suspicious  of  English  designs  of  conquest, 
and  treated  Stoddart  with  marked  indignity.  The  Ameer 
appears  to  have  been  the  very  model  of  a  melodramatic  East- 
ern tyrant.  He  was  cruel  and  capricious  as  another  Calig- 
ula, and  perhaps,  in  truth,  quite  as  mad.  He  threw  Stod- 
dart into  prison.  Captain  Conolly  was  appointed  two  years 
after  to  proceed  to  Bokhara  and  other  countries  of  the  same 
region.  He  undertook  to  endeavor  to  effect  the  liberation 


180  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

of  Stoddart,  but  could  only  succeed  in  sharing  his  sufferings, 
and,  at  last,  his  fate.  The  Ameer  had  written  a  letter  to 
the  Queen  of  England,  and  the  answer  was  written  by  the 
Foreign  Secretary,  referring  the  Ameer  to  the  Governor- 
general  of  India.  The  savage  tyrant  redoubled  the  ill-treat- 
ment of  his  captives.  He  accused  them  of  being  spies  and 
of  giving  help  to  his  enemies.  The  Indian  Government  were 
of  opinion  that  the  envoys  had  in  some  manner  exceeded 
their  instructions,  and  that  Conolly,  in  particular,  had  con- 
tributed by  indiscretion  to  his  own  fate.  Nothing,  there- 
fore, was  done  to  obtain  their  release  beyond  diplomatic  ef- 
forts, and  appeals  to  the  magnanimity  of  the  Ameer,  which 
had  not  any  particular  effect.  Dr.  Wolff,  the  celebrated 
traveller  and  missionary,  afterward  undertook  an  expedi- 
tion of  his  own  in  the  hope  of  saving  the  unfortunate  cap- 
tives; but  he  only  reached  Bokhara  in  time  to  hear  that 
they  had  been  put  to  death.  The  moment  and  the  actual 
manner  of  their  death  cannot  be  known  to  positive  certain- 
ty, but  there  is  little  doubt  that  they  were  executed  on  the 
same  day  by  the  orders  of  the  Arneer.  The  journals  of 
Conolly  have  been  preserved  up  to  an  advanced  period  of 
his  captivity,  and  they  relieve  so  far  the  melancholy  of  the 
fate  that  fell  on  the  unfortunate  officers  by  showing  that  the 
horrors  of  their  hopeless  imprisonment  were  so  great  that 
their  dearest  friends  must  have  been  glad  to  know  of  their 
release  even  by  the  knife  of  the  executioner.  It  is  perhaps 
not  the  least  bitter  part  of  the  story  that,  in  the  belief 
of  many,  including  the  unfortunate  officers  themselves,  the 
course  pursued  by  the  English  authorities  in  India  had  done 
more  to  hand  them  over  to  the  treacherous  cruelty  of  their 
captor  than  to  release  them  from  his  power.  In  truth,  the 
authorities  in  India  had  had  enough  of  intervention.  It 
would  have  needed  a  great  exigency,  indeed,  to  stir  them 
into  energy  of  action  soon  again  in  Central  Asia. 

This  thrilling  chapter  of  English  history  closes  with  some- 
thing like  a  piece  of  harlequinade.  The  curtain  fell  amidst 
general  laughter.  Only  the  genius  of  Lord  Ellenborough 
could  have  turned  the  mood  of  India  and  of  England  to 
mirth  on  such  a  subject.  Lord  Ellenborough  was  equal  to 
this  extraordinary  feat.  The  never-to-be-forgotten  procla- 
mation about  the  restoration  to  India  of  the  gates  of  the 


THE   DISASTERS  OF  CABUL.  181 

Temple  of  Sornnauth,  redeemed  at  Lord  Ellenborough's  or- 
ders when  Ghuznee  was  retaken  by  the  English,  was  first 
received  with  incredulity  as  a  practical  joke ;  then  with  one 
universal  burst  of  laughter ;  then  with  indignation ;  and 
then,  again,  when  the  natural  anger  had  died  away,  with 
laughter  again.  "My  brothers  and  my  friends,"  wrote  Lord 
Ellenborough  "to  all  the  princes,  chiefs,  and  people  of  India," 
— "  Our  victorious  army  bears  the  gates  of  the  Temple  of 
Somnauth  in  triumph  from  Afghanistan,  and  the  despoiled 
tomb  of  Sultan  Mahmoud  looks  upon  the  ruins  of  Ghuznee. 
The  insult  of  eight  hundred  years  is  at  last  avenged.  The 
gates  of  the  Temple  of  Somnauth,  so  long  the  memorial  of 
your  humiliation,  are  become  the  proudest'  record  of  your 
national  glory ;  the  proof  of  your  superiority  in  arms  over 
the  nations  beyond  the  Indus." 

No  words  of  pompous  man  could  possibly  have  put  to- 
gether greater  absurdities.  The  brothers  and  friends  were 
Mohammedans  and  Hindoos,  who  were  about  as  likely  to 
agree  as  to  the  effect  of  these  symbols  of  triumph  as  a  Fe- 
nian and  an  Orangeman  would  be  to  fraternize  in  a  toast  to 
the  glorious,  pious,  and  immortal  memory.  To  the  Moham- 
medans the  triumph  of  Lord  Ellenborough  was  simply  an 
insult.  To  the  Hindoos  the  offer  was  ridiculous,  for  the 
Temple  of  Somnauth  itself  was  in  ruins,  and  the  ground  it 
covered  was  trodden  by  Mohammedans.  To  finish  the  ab- 
surdity, the  gates  proved  not  to  be  genuine  relics  at  all. 

On  October  1st,  1842,  exactly  four  years  since  Lord  Auck- 
land's proclamation  announcing  and  justifying  the  interven- 
tion to  restore  Shah  Soojah,  Lord  Ellenborough  issued  an- 
other proclamation  announcing  the  complete  failure  and  the 
revocation  of  the  policy  of  his  predecessor.  Lord  Ellenbor- 
ough declared  that  "  to  force  a  sovereign  upon  a  reluctant 
people  would  be  as  inconsistent  with  the  policy  as  it  is  with 
the  principles  of  the  British  Government ;"  that,  therefore, 
they  would  recognize  any  government  approved  by  the  Af- 
ghans themselves;  that  the  British  arms  would  be  withdrawn 
from  Afghanistan,  and  that  the  Government  of  India  would 
remain  "content  with  the  limits  nature  appears  to  have 
assigned  to  its  empire."  Dost  Mahomed  was  released  from 
his  captivity,  and  before  long  was  ruler  ofCabul  once  again. 
Thus  ended  the  story  of  our  expedition  to  reorganize  the  in- 


182  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ternal  condition  of  Afghanistan.  After  four  years  of  unpar- 
alleled trial  and  disaster  everything-  was  restored  to  the  con- 
dition in  which  we  found  it,  except  that  there  were  so  many 
brave  Englishmen  sleeping  in  bloody  graves.  The  Duke  of 
Wellington  ascribed  the  causes  of  our  failure  to  making  war 
with  a  peace  establishment ;  making  war  without  a  sale  base 
of  operations ;  carrying  the  native  army  out  of  India  into 
a  strange  and  cold  climate ;  invading  a  poor  country  which 
was  unequal  to  the  supply  of  our  wants;  giving  undue  pow- 
er to  political  agents;  want  of  forethought  and  undue  con- 
fidence in  the  Afghans  on  the  part  of  Sir  W.  Macnaghten  ; 
placing  our  magazines,  even  our  treasure,  in  indefensible 
places ;  great  military  neglect  and  mismanagement  after  the 
outbreak.  Doubtless  these  were,  in  a  military  sense,  the 
reasons  for  the  failure  of  an  enterprise  which  cost  the  rev- 
enues of  India  an  enormous  amount  of  treasure.  But  the 
causes  of  failure  were  deeper  than  any  military  errors  could 
explain.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  genius  of  a  Napoleon 
and  the  forethought  of  a  Wellington  could  have  won  any 
permanent  success  for  an  enterprise  founded  on  so  false  and 
fatal  a  policy.  Nothing  in  the  ability  or  devotion  of  those 
intrusted  with  the  task  of  carrying  it  out  could  have  made 
it  deserve  success.  Our  first  error  of  principle  was  to  go 
completely  out  of  our  way  for  the  purpose  of  meeting  mere 
speculative  dangers;  our  next  and  far  greater  error  was 
made  when  we  attempted,  in  the  words  of  Lord  Ellenbor- 
ough's  proclamation,  to  force  a  sovereign  upon  a  reluctant 
people. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE    REPEAL    YEAR. 

"THE  year  1843,"  said  O'Connell,  "  is  and  shall  be  the 
great  Repeal  year."  In  the  year  1843,  at  all  events,  O'Con- 
riell  and  his  Repeal  agitation  are  entitled  to  the  foremost 
place.  The  character  of  the  man  himself  well  deserves  some 
calm  consideration.  We  are  now,  perhaps,  in  a  condition  to 
do  it  justice.  We  are  far  removed  in  sentiment  and  politi- 
cal association,  if  not  exactly  in  years,  from  the  time  when 
O'Connell  was  the  idol  of  one  party,  and  the  object  of  all  the 


THE  REPEAL  YEAR.  183 

bitterest  scorn  and  hatred  of  the  other.  No  man  of  his  time 
was  so  madly  worshipped  and  so  fiercely  denounced.  No 
man  in  our  time  was  ever  the  object  of  so  much  abuse  in  the 
newspapers.  The  fiercest  and  coarsest  attacks  that  we  can 
remember  to  have  been  made  in  English  journals  on  Cobden 
and  Bright  during  the  heat  of  the  Anti-Corn-law  agitation 
seem  placid,  gentle,  and  almost  complimentary  when  com- 
pared with  the  criticisms  daily  applied  to  O'Connell.  The 
only  vituperation  which  could  equal  in  vehemence  and  scur- 
rility that  poured  out  upon  O'Connell  was  that  which  O'Con- 
nell himself  poured  out  upon  his  assailants.  His  hand  was 
against  every  man,  if  every  man's  hand  was  against  him. 
He  asked  for  no  quarter,  and  he  gave  none. 

We  have  outlived  not  the  times  merely,  but  the  whole 
spirit  of  the  times,  so  far  as  political  controversy  is  concern- 
ed. We  are  now  able  to  recognize  the  fact  that  a  public 
man  may  hold  opinions  which  are  distasteful  to  the  majority, 
and  yet  be  perfectly  sincere  and  worthy  of  respect.  We  are 
well  aware  that  a  man  may  differ  from  us,  even  on  vital 
questions,  and  yet  be  neither  fool  nor  knave.  But  this  view 
of  things  was  riot  generally  taken  in  the  days  of  O'Connell's 
great  agitation.  He  and  his  enemies  alike  acted  in  their 
controversies  on  the  principle  that  a  political  opponent  is 
necessarily  a  blockhead  or  a  scoundrel.  It  is  strange  and 
somewhat  melancholy  to  read  the  strictures  of  so  enlightened 
a  woman  as  Miss  Martineau  upon  O'Connell.  They  are  all 
based  upon  what  a  humorous  writer  has  called  the  "fiend- 
in-human -shape  theory."  Miss  Martineau  not  merely  as- 
sumes that  O'Connell  was  absolutely  insincere  and  untrust- 
worthy, but  discourses  of  him  on  the  assumption  that  he  was 
knowingly  and  purposely  a  villain.  Not  only  does  she  hold 
that  his  Repeal  agitation  was  an  unqualified  evil  for  his 
country,  and  that  Repeal,  if  gained,  would  have  been  a  curse 
to  it,  but  she  insists  that  O'Connell  himself  was  thoroughly 
convinced  of  the  facts.  She  devotes  whole  pages  of  lively 
and  acrid  argument  to  prove  not  only  that  O'Connell  was 
ruining  his  country,  but  that  he  knew  he  was  ruining  it,  and 
persevered  in  his  wickedness  out  of  pure  self-seeking.  No 
writer  possessed  of  one-tenth  of  Miss  Martineau's  intellect 
and  education  would  now  reason  after  that  fashion  about 
any  public  man.  If  there  is  any  common  delusion  of  past 


184  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

days  which  may  be  taken  as  entirely  exploded  now,  it  is  the 
idea  that  any  man  ever  swayed  vast  masses  of  people,  and 
became  the  idol  and  the  hero  of  a  nation,  by  the  strength  of 
a  conscious  hypocrisy  and  imposture. 

O'Connell  in  this  Repeal  year,  as  he  called  it,  was  by  far 
the  most  prominent  politician  in  these  countries  who  had 
never  been  in  office.  He  had  been  the  patron  of  the  Mel- 
bourne Ministry,  and  his  patronage  had  proved  baneful  to 
it.  One  of  the  great  causes  of  the  detestation  in  which  the 
Melbourne  Whigs  were  held  by  a  vast  number  of  English 
people  was  their  alleged  subserviency  to  the  Irish  agitator. 
We  cannot  be  surprised  if  the  English  public  just  then  was 
little  inclined  to  take  an  impartial  estimate  of  O'Connell. 
He  had  attacked  some  of  their  public  men  in  language  of 
the  fiercest  denunciation.  He  had  started  an  agitation 
which  seemed  as  if  it  were  directly  meant  to  bring  about  a 
break-up  of  the  Imperial  system  so  lately  completed  by  the 
Act  of  Union.  He  was  opposed  to  the  existence  of  the  State 
Church  in  Ireland.  He  was  the  bitter  enemy  of  the  Irish 
landlord  class — of  the  landlords,  that  is  to  say,  who  took 
their  title  in  any  way  from  England.  He  was  familiarly 
known  in  the  graceful  controversy  of  the  time  as  the  "  Big 
Beggarman."  It  was  an  article  of  faith  with  the  general 
public  that  he  was  enriching  himself  at  the  expense  of  a 
poor  and  foolish  people.  It  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  he  had 
given  up  a  splendid  practice  at  the  bar  to  carry  on  his  agi- 
tation; that  he  lost  by  the  agitation,  pecuniarily,  far  more 
than  he  ever  got  by  it;  that  he  had  not  himself  received 
from  first  to  last  anything  like  the  amount  of  the  noble  trib- 
ute so  becomingly  and  properly  given  to  Mr.  Cobden,  and  so 
honorably  accepted  by  him ;  arid  that  he  died  poor,  leaving 
his  sons  poor.  Indeed,  it  is  a  remarkable  evidence  of  the 
purifying  nature  of  any  great  political  cause,  even  where  the 
object  sought  is  but  a  phantom,  that  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
give  a  single  instance  of  a  great  political  agitation  carried 
on  in  these  countries  and  in  modern  times  by  leaders  who 
had  any  primary  purpose  of  making  money.  But  at  that 
time  the  general  English  public  were  firmly  convinced  that 
O'Connell  was  simply  keeping  up  his  agitation  for  the  sake 
of  pocketing  "  the  rent."  Some  of  the  qualities,  too,  that 
specially  endeared  him  to  his  Celtic  countrymen  made  him 


THE  KEPEAL  YEAR.  185 

particularly  objectionable  to  Englishmen  ;  and  Englishmen 
have  never  been  famous  for  readiness  to  enter  into  the  feel- 
ings and  accept  the  point  of  view  of  other  peoples.  O'Con- 
nell  was  a  thorough  Celt.  He  represented  all  the  impul- 
siveness, the  quick-changing  emotions,  the  passionate,  exag- 
gerated loves  and  hatreds,  the  heedlessness  of  statement,  the 
tendency  to  confound  impressions  with  facts,  the  ebullient 
humor — all  the  other  qualities  that  are  especially  character- 
istic of  the  Celt.  The  Irish  people  were  the  audience  to 
which  O'Connell  habitually  played.  It  may,  indeed,  be  said 
that  even  in  playing  to  this  audience  he  commonly  played 
to  the  gallery.  As  the  orator  of  a  popular  assembly,  as  the 
orator  of  a  monster  meeting,  he  probably  never  had  an  equal 
in  these  countries.  He  had  many  of  the  physical  endow- 
ments that  are  especially  favorable  to  success  in  such  a 
sphere.  He  had  a  herculean  frame,  a  stately  presence,  a  face 
capable  of  expressing  easily  and  effectively  the  most  rapid 
.alternations  of  mood,  and  a  voice  which  all  hearers  admit 
to  have  been  almost  unrivalled  for  strength  and  sweetness. 
Its  power,  its  pathos,  its  passion,  its  music  have  been  de- 
scribed in  words  of  positive  rapture  by  men  who  detested 
O'Connell,  and  who  would  rather,  if  they  could,  have  denied 
to  him  any  claim  on  public  attention,  even  in  the  matter  of 
voice.  He  spoke  without  studied  preparation,  and  of  course 
had  all  the  defects  of  such  a  style.  He  fell  into  repetition 
and  into  carelessness  of  construction ;  he  was  hurried  away 
into  exaggeration  and  sometimes  into  mere  bombast.  But 
he  had  all  the  peculiar  success,  too,  which  rewards  the  orator 
who  can  speak  without  preparation.  He  always  spoke  right 
to  the  hearts  -of  his  hearers.  On  the  platform  or  in  Parlia- 
ment, whatever  he  said  was  said  to  his  audience,  and  was 
never  in  the  nature  of  a  discourse  delivered  over  their  heads. 
He  entered  the  House  of  Commons  when  he  was  nearly  fifty- 
four  years  of  age.  Most  persons  supposed  that  the  style  of 
speaking  he  had  formed,  first  in  addressing  juries,  and  next 
in  rousing  Irish  mobs,  must  cause  his  failure  when  he  came 
to  appeal  to  the  unsympathetic  and  fastidious  House  of 
Commons.  But  it  is  certain  that  O'Connell  became  one  of 
the  most  successful  Parliamentary  orators  of  his  time.  Lord 
Jeffrey,  a  professional  critic,  declared  that  all  other  speakers 
in  the  House  seemed  to  him  only  talking  school-boy  talk  af- 


186  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ter  he  had  heard  O'Connell.  No  man  we  now  know  of  is 
less  likely  to  be  carried  away  by  any  of  the  clap-trap  arts 
of  a  false  demagogic  style  than  Mr.  Roebuck;  and  Mr.  Koc- 
buck  has  said  that  he  considers  O'Connell  the  greatest  orator 
he  ever  heard  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Charles  Dickens, 
when  a  reporter  in  the  gallery,  where  he  had  few  equals,  if 
any,  in  his  craft,  put  down  his  pencil  once  when  engaged  in 
reporting  a  speech  of  O'Connell's  on  one  of  the  tithe  riots  in 
Ireland,  and  declared  that  he  could  not  take  notes  of  the 
speech,  so  moved  was  he  by  its  pathos.  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
who  certainly  had  no  great  liking  for  O'Connell,  has  spoken 
in  terms  as  high  as  any  one  could  use  about  his  power  over 
the  House.  But  O'Connell's  eloquence  only  helped  him  to 
make  all  the  more  enemies  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He 
was  reckless  even  there  in  his  denunciation,  although  he  took 
care  never  to  obtrude  on  Parliament  the  extravagant  and 
unmeaning  abuse  of  opponents  which  delighted  the  Irish 
mob  meetings. 

O'Connell  was  a  crafty  and  successful  lawyer.  The  Irish 
peasant,  like  the  Scottish,  is,  or  at  least  then  was,  remarka- 
bly fond  of  litigation.  He  delighted  in  the  quirks  and  quib- 
bles of  law,  and  in  the  triumphs  won  by  the  skill  of  lawyers 
over  opponents.  He  admired  O'Connell  all  the  more  when 
O'Connell  boasted  and  proved  that  he  could  drive  a  coach 
and  six  through  any  Act  of  Parliament.  One  of  the  pet  he- 
roes of  Irish  legend  is  a  personage  whose  cleverness  and  craft 
procure  for  him  a  sobriquet  which  has  been  rendered  into 
English  by  the  words  "twists  upon  twists  and  tricks  upon 
tricks."  O'Connell  was  in  the  eyes  of  many  of  the  Irish 
peasantry  an  embodiment  of  "twists  upon  twists  and  tricks 
upon  tricks,"  enlisted  in  their  cause  for  the  confusion  of 
their  adversaries.  He  had  borne  the  leading  part  in  carry- 
ing Catholic  emancipation.  He  had  encountered  all  the  dan- 
ger and  responsibility  of  the  somewhat  aggressive  move- 
ment by  which  it  was  finally  secured.  It  is  true  that  it  was 
a  reform  which  in  the  course  of  civilization  must  have  been 
carried.  It  had  in  its  favor  all  the  enlightenment  of  the 
time.  The  eloquence  of  the  greatest  orators,  the  intellect  of 
the  truest  philosophers,  the  prescience  of  the  wisest  states- 
men had  pleaded  for  it  and  helped  to  make  its  way  clear. 
No  man  can  doubt  that  it  must  in  a  short  time  have  been 


THE   REPEAL   YEAR.  187 

carried  if  O'Connell  had  never  lived.  But  it  was  carried 
just  then  by  virtue  of  O'Conuell's  bold  agitation,  and  by 
the  wise  resolve  of  the  Tory  Government  not  to  provoke  a 
civil  war.  It  is  deeply  to  be  regretted  that  Catholic  eman- 
cipation was  not  conceded  to  the  claims  of  justice.  Had  it 
been  so  yielded,  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  we  should  ever 
have  heard  much  of  the  Repeal  agitation.  But  the  Irish 
people  saw,  and  indeed  all  the  world  was  made  aware  of  the 
fact,  that  emancipation  would  not  have  been  conceded,  just 
then  at  least,  but  for  the  fear  of  civil  disturbance.  To  an 
Englishman  looking  coolly  back  from  a  distance,  the  differ- 
ence is  clear  between  granting  to-day,  rather  than  provoke 
disturbance,  that  which  every  one  sees  must  be  granted 
some  time,  and  conceding  what  the  vast  majority  of  the 
English  people  believe  can  never  with  propriety  or  even 
safety  be  granted  at  all.  But  we  can  hardly  wonder  if  the 
Irish  peasant  did  not  make  such  distinctions.  All  he  knew 
was  that  O'Connell  had  demanded  Catholic  emancipation, 
and  had  been  answered  at  first  by  a  direct  refusal;  that  he 
had  said  he  would  compel  its  concession,  and  that  in  the 
end  it  was  conceded  to  him.  When,  therefore,  O'Coynell 
said  that  he  would  compel  the  Government  to  give  him  re- 
peal of  the  Union,  the  Irish  peasant  naturally  believed  that 
he  could  keep  his  word. 

Nor  is  there  any  reason  to  doubt  that  O'Connell  himself 
believed  in  the  possibility  of  accomplishing  his  purpose. 
We  are  apt  now  to  think  of  the  union  between  England  and 
Ireland  as  of  time-honored  endurance.  It  had  been  scarce- 
ly thirty  years  in  existence  when  O'Connell  entered  Parlia- 
ment. The  veneration  of  ancient  lineage,  the  majesty  of 
custom,  the  respect  due  to  the  "  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  " 
— none  of  these  familiar  claims  could  be  urged  on  behalf 
of  the  legislative  union  between  England  and  Ireland.  To 
O'Connell  it  appeared  simply  as  a  modern  innovation  which 
had  nothing  to  be  said  for  it  except  that  a  majority  of  Eng- 
lishmen had  by  threats  and  bribery  forced  it  oil  a  majority 
of  Irishmen.  Mr.  Lecky,  the  author  of  the  "  History  of  Eu- 
ropean Morals,"  may  be  cited  as  an  impartial  authority  on 
such  a  subject.  Let  us  see  what  he  says  in  his  work  on 
"The  Leaders  of  Public  Opinion  in  Ireland,"  with  regard  to 
the  movement  for  repeal  of  the  Union,  of  which  it  seems  al- 


188  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

most  needless  to  say  he  disapproves.  "  O'Connell  perceived 
clearly,"  says  Mr.  Lecky,  "  that  the  tendency  of  affairs  in 
Europe  was  toward  the  recognition  of  the  principle  that  a 
nation's  will  is  the  one  legitimate  rule  of  its  government. 
All  rational  men  acknowledged  that  the  Union  was  imposed 
on  Ireland  by  corrupt  means,  contrary  to  the  wish  of  one 
generation.  O'Connell  was  prepared  to  show,  by  the  pro- 
test of  the  vast  majority  of  the  people,  that  it  was  retained 
without  the  acquiescence  of  the  next.  He  had  allied  him- 
self with  the  parties  that  were  rising  surely  and  rapidly  to 
power  in  England  —  with  the  democracy,  whose  gradual 
progress  is  effacing  the  most  venerable  landmarks  of  the 
Constitution  —  with  the  Free-traders,  whose  approaching 
triumph  he  had  hailed  and  exulted  in  from  afar.  He  had 
perceived  the  possibility  of  forming  a  powerful  party  in  Par- 
liament, which  would  be  free  to  co-operate  with  all  English 
parties  without  coalescing  with  any,  and  might  thus  turn 
the  balance  of  factions  and  decide  the  fate  of  ministries. 
He  saw,  too,  that  while  England  in  a  time  of  peace  might 
resist  the  expressed  will  of  the  Irish  nation,  its  policy  would 
be  necessarily  modified  in  time  of  war ;  and  he  predicted 
that  should  there  bd  a  collision  with  France  while  the  na- 
tion was  organized  as  in  1843,  Repeal  would  be  the  imme- 
diate and  the  inevitable  consequence.  In  a  word,  he  be- 
lieved that  under  a  constitutional  government  the  will  of 
four-fifths  of  a  nation,  if  peacefully,  perseveringly,  and  ener- 
getically expressed,  must  sooner  or  later  be  triumphant.  If 
a  war  had  broken  out  during  the  agitation  —  if  the  life  of 

O  3 

O'Connell  had  been  prolonged  ten  years  longer — if  any  wor- 
thy successor  had  assumed  his  mantle — if  a  fearful  famine 
had  not  broken  the  spirit  of  the  people — who  can  say  that 
the  agitation  would  not  have  been  successful?"  No  one, 
we  fancy,  except  those  who  are  always  convinced  that  noth- 
ing can  ever  come  to  pass  which. they  think  ought  not  to 
come  to  pass.  At  all  events,  if  an  English  political  philoso- 
pher, surveying  the  events  after  a  distance  of  thirty  years, 
is  of  opinion  that  Repeal  was  possible,  it  is  not  surprising 
that  O'Connell  thought  its  attainment  possible  at  the  time 
when  he  set  himself  to  agitate  for  it.  Even  if  this  be  not 
conceded,  it  will  at  least  be  allowed  that  it  is  not  very  sur- 
prising if  the  Irish  peasant  saw  no  absurdity  in  the  move- 


THE   KEPEAL   YEAR.  189 

mcnt.  Our  system  of  government  by  party  does  not  lay 
claim  to  absolute  perfection.  It  is  an  excellent  mechanism, 
on  the  whole ;  it  is  probably  the  most  satisfactory  that  the 
wit  of  man  has  yet  devised  for  the  management  of  the  af- 
fairs of  a  State;  but  its  greatest  admirers  will  bear  to  be 
told  that  it  has  its  drawbacks  and  disadvantages.  One  of 
these  undoubtedly  is  found  in  the  fact  that  so  few  reforms 
are  accomplished  in  deference  to  the  claims  of  justice,  in 
comparison  with  those  that  are  yielded  to  the  pressure  of 
numbers.  A  great  English  statesman  in  our  own  day  once 
said  that  Parliament  had  done  many  just  things,  but  few 
things  because  they  were  just.  O'Connell  and  the  Irish 
people  saw  that  Catholic  emancipation  had  been  yielded  to 
pressure  rather  than  to  justice ;  it  is  not  wonderful  if  they 
thought  that  pressure  might  prevail  as  well  in  the  matter 
of  Repeal. 

In  many  respects  O'Connell  differed  from  more  modern 
Irish  Nationalists.  He  was  a  thorough  Liberal.  He  was  a 
devoted  opponent  of  negro  slavery ;  he  was  a  stanch  Free- 
trader; he  was  a  friend  of  popular  education;  he  was  an 
enemy  to  all  excess ;  he  was  opposed  to  strikes ;  he  was  an 
advocate  of  religious  equality  everywhere;  and  he  declined 
to  receive  the  commands  of  the  Vatican  in  his  political  agi- 
tation. "I  am  a  Catholic,  but  I  am  not  a  Papist,"  was  his 
own  definition  of  his  religious  attitude.  He  preached  the 
doctrine  of  constitutional  agitation  strictly,  and  declared 
that  no  political  Reform  was  worth  the  shedding  of  one 
drop  of  blood.  It  may  be  asked  how  it  came  about  that 
with  all  these  excellent  attributes,  which  all  critics  now  al- 
low to  him,  O'Connell  was  so  detested  by  the  vast  majori- 
ty of  the  English  people.  One  reason,  undoubtedly,  is,  that 
O'Connell  deliberately  revived  and  worked  up  for  his  polit- 
ical purposes  the  almost  extinct  national  hatreds  of  Celt  and 
Saxon.  As  a  phrase  of  political  controversy,  he  may  be  said 
to  have  invented  the  word  "Saxon."  He  gave  a  terrible  li- 
cense to  his  tongue.  His  abuse  was  outrageous;  his  praise 
was  outrageous.  The  very  effusiveness  of  his  loyalty  told 
to  his  disadvantage.  People  could  not  understand  how  one 
who  perpetually  denounced  "the  Saxon"  could  be  so  enthu- 
siastic and  rapturous  in  his  professions  of  loyalty  to  the  Sax- 
on's Queen.  In  the  common  opinion  of  Englishmen,  all  the 


190  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

evils  of  Ireland,  all  the  troubles  attaching  to  the  connection 
between  the  two  countries,  had  arisen  from  this  unmitigated, 
rankling  hatred  of  Celt  for  Saxon.  It  was  impossible  for 
them  to  believe  that  a  man  who  deliberately  applied  all  the 
force  of  his  eloquence  to  revive  it  could  be  a  genuine  patriot. 
It  appeared  intolerable  that  while  thus  laboring  to  make  the 
Celt  hate  the  Saxon  he  should  yet  profess  an  extravagant 
devotion  to  the  Sovereign  of  England.  Yet  O'Connell  was 
probably  quite  sincere  in  his  professions  of  loyalty.  He  was 
in  no  sense  a  revolutionist.  He  had  from  his  education  in 
a  French  college  acquired  an  early  detestation  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  French  Revolution.  Of  the  Irish  rebels  of 
'98  lie  spoke  with  as  savage  an  intolerance  as  the  narrow- 
est English  Tories  could  show  in  speaking  of  himself.  The 
Tones,  and  Emmetts,  and  Fitzgeralds,  whom  so  many  of  the 
Irish  people  adored,  were,  in  O'Connell's  eyes,  and  in  his 
words,  only  "a  gang  of  miscreants."  He  grew  angry  at  the 
slightest  expression  of  an  opinion  among  his  followers  that 
seemed  to  denote  even  a  willingness  to  discuss  any  of  the 
doctrines  of  Communism.  His  theory  and  his  policy  evi- 
dently were  that  Ireland  was  to  be  saved  by  a  dictatorship 
intrusted  to  himself,  with  the  Irish  priesthood  acting  as  his 
officers  and  agents.  He  maintained  the  authority  of  the 
priests,  and  his  own  authority  by  means  of  them  and  over 
them.  The  political  system  of  the  country  for  the  purposes 
of  agitation  was  to  be  a  sort  of  hierarchy;  the  parish  priests 
occupying  the  lowest  grade,  the  bishops  standing  on  the 
higher  steps,  and  O'Connell  himself  supreme,  as  the  pontiff, 
over  all. 

He  had  a  Parliamentary  system  by  means  of  which  he 
proposed  to  approach  more  directly  the  question  of  Repeal 
of  the  Union.  He  got  seats  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
a  number  of  his  sons,  his  nephews,  and  his  sworn  retainers. 
"O'Connell's  tail"  was  the  precursor  of  "the  Pope's  Brass 
Band"  in  the  slang  of  the  House  of  Commons.  He  had  an 
almost  supreme  control  over  the  Irish  constituencies,  and 
whenever  a  vacancy  took  place  he  sent  down  the  Repeal 
candidate  to  contest  it.  He  always  inculcated  and  insisted 
on  the  necessity  of  order  and  peace.  Indeed,  as  he  proposed 
to  carry  on  his  agitation  altogether  by  the  help  of  the  bish- 
ops and  the  priests,  it  was  not  possible  for  him,  even  were 


THE  REPEAL  YEAR.  191 

he  so  inclined,  to  conduct  it  on  any  other  than  peaceful  prin- 
ciples. "The  man  who  commits  a  crime  gives  strength  to 
the  enemy,"  was  a  maxim  which  he  was  never  weary  of  im- 
pressing upon  his  followers.  The  Temperance  movement  set 
on  foot  with  such  remarkable  and  sudden  success  by  Father 
Mathew  was  at  once  turned  to  account  by  O'Connell.  He 
was  himself,  in  his  later  years  at  all  events,  a  very  temperate 
man,  and  he  was  delighted  at  the  prospect  of  good  order  and 
discipline  which  the  Temperance  movement  afforded.  Fa- 
ther Mathew  was  very  far  from  sharing  all  the  political  opin- 
ions of  O'Connell.  The  sweet  and  simple  friar,  whose  power 
was  that  of  goodness  and  enthusiasm  only,  and  who  had  but 
little  force  of  character  or  intellect,  shrank  from  political  ag- 
itation, and  was  rather  Conservative  than  otherwise  in  his 
views.  But  he  could  not  afford  to  repudiate  the  support 
of  O'Connell,  who  on  all  occasions  glorified  the  Temperance 
movement,  and  called  upon  his  followers  to  join  it,  and  was 
always  boasting  of  his  "  noble  army  of  Teetotallers."  It  was 
probably  when  he  found  that  the  mere  fact  of  his  having 
supported  the  Melbourne  Government  did  so  much  to  dis- 
credit that  Government  in  the  eyes  of  Englishmen,  and  to 
bring  about  its  fall,  that  O'Connell  went  deliberately  out 
of  the  path  of  mere  Parliamentary  agitation,  and  started 
that  system  of  agitation  by  monster  meeting  which  has  since 
his  time  been  regularly  established  among  us  as  a  principal 
part  of  all  political  organization  for  a  definite  purpose.  He 
founded  in  Dublin  a  Repeal  Association  which  met  in  a  place 
on  Burgh  Quay,  and  which  he  styled  Conciliation  Hall. 
Around  him  in  this  Association  he  gathered  his  sons,  his  rel- 
atives, his  devoted  followers,  priestly  and  lay.  The  Nation 
newspaper,  then  in  its  youth  and  full  of  a  fresh  literary  vig- 
or, was  one  of  his  most  brilliant  instruments.  At  a  later  pe- 
riod of  the  agitation  it  was  destined  to  be  used  against  him, 
and  with  severe  effect.  The  famous  monster  meetings  were 
usually  held  on  a  Sunday,  on  some  open  spot,  mostly  selected 
for  its  historic  fame,  and  with  all  the  picturesque  surround- 
ings of  hill  and  stream.  From  the  dawn  of  the  summer  day 
the  Repealers  were  thronging  to  the  scene  of  the  meeting. 
They  came  from  all  parts  of  the  neighboring  country  for 
miles  and  miles.  They  were  commonly  marshalled  and 
guided  by  their  parish  priests.  They  all  attended  the  ser- 


A  HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

vices  of  their  Church  before  the  meeting  began.  The  influ- 
ence of  his  religion  and  of  his  patriotic  feelings  was  brought 
to  bear  at  once  upon  the  impressionable  and  emotional  Irish 
Celt.  At  the  meeting  O'Connell  and  several  of  his  chosen 
orators  addressed  the  crowd  on  the  subject  of  the  wrongs 
done  to  Ireland  by  "the  Saxon,"  the  claims  of  Ireland  to  the 
restoration  of  her  old  Parliament  in  College  Green,  and  the 
certainty  of  her  having  it  restored  if  Irishmen  only  obeyed 
O'Connell  and  their  priests,  were  sober,  and  displayed  their 
strength  arid  their  unity. 

O'Connell  himself,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  always  the 
great  orator  of  the  day.  The  agitation  developed  a  great 
deal  of  literary  talent  among  the  younger  men  of  education  ; 
but  it  never  brought  out  a  man  who  was  even  spoken  of  as 
a  possible  successor  to  O'Connell  in  eloquence.  His  mag- 
nificent voice  enabled  him  to  do  what  no  genius  and  no  elo- 
quence less  aptly  endowed  could  have  done.  He  could  send 
his  lightest  word  thrilling  to  the  extreme  of  the  vast  con- 
course of  people  whom  he  desired  to  move.  He  swayed 
them  with  the  magic  of  an  absolute  control.  He  understood 
all  the  moods  of  his  people;  to  address  himself  to  them 
came  naturally  to  him.  He  made  them  roar  with  laughter; 
he  made  them  weep;  he  made  them  thrill  with  indignation. 
As  the  shadow  runs  over  a  field,  so  the  impression  of  his 
varying  eloquence  ran  over  the  assemblage.  He  command- 
ed the  emotions  of  his  hearers  as  a  consummate  conductor 
sways  the  energies  of  his  orchestra.  Every  allusion  told. 
When,  in  one  of  the  meetings  held  in  his  native  Kerry,  he 
turned  solemnly  round  and  appealed  to  "  yonder  blue  moun- 
tains whei*e  you  and  I  were  cradled  ;"  or  in  sight  of  the  ob- 
jects he  described  he  apostrophized  Ireland  as  the  "  land 
of  the  green  valley  and  the  rushing  river" — an  admirably 
characteristic  and  complete  description ;  or  recalled  some 
historical  association  connected  with  the  scene  he  surveyed 
— each  was  some  special  appeal  to  the  instant  feelings  of  his 
peculiar  audience.  Sometimes  he  indulged  in  the  grossest 
and  what  ought  to  have  been  the  most  ridiculous  flattery 
of  his  hearers — flattery  which  would  have  offended  and  dis- 
gusted the  dullest  English  audience.  But  the  Irish  peasant, 
with  all  his  keen  sense  of  the  ridiculous  in  others,  is  singu- 
larly open  to  the  influence  of  any  appeal  to  his  own  vanity. 


THE  KEPEAL   YEAR.  193 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  the  "  eternal-womanly  "  in  the  Cel- 
tic nature,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  overflatter  one  of  the  race. 
Doubtless  O'Connell  knew  this,  and  acted  purposely  on  it; 
and  this  was  a  peculiarity  of  his  political  conduct  which  it 
would  be  hard  indeed  to  commend  or  even  to  defend.  But, 
in  truth,  he  adopted  in  his  agitation  the  tactics  he  had  em- 
ployed at  the  bar.  "A  good  speech  is  a  good  thing,"  lie 
used. to  say;  "but  the  verdict  is  the  thing."  His  flattery 
of  his  hearers  was  not  grosser  than  his  abuse  of  all  those 
whom  they  did  not  like.  His  dispraise  often  had  absolute- 
ly no  meaning  in  it.  There  was  no  sense  whatever  in  call- 
ing the  Duke  of  Wellington  "a  stunted  corporal;"  one  might 
as  well  have  called  Mont  Blanc  a  mole-hill.  Nobody  could 
•have  shown  more  clearly  than  O'Connell  did  that  he  did  not 
believe  the  Times  to  be  "an  obscure  rag."  It  would  have 
been  as  humorous  and  as  truthful  to  say  that  there  was  no 
such  paper  as  the  Times.  But  these  absurdities  made  an 
ignorant  audience  laugh  for  the  moment,  and  O'Connell  had 
gained  the  only  point  he  just  then  wanted  to  carry.  He 
would  probably  have  answered  any  one  who  remonstrated 
with  him  on  the  disingenuousness  of  such  sayings,  as  Mrs. 
Thrale,  says  Burke,  once  answered  her  Avhen  she  taxed  him 
with  a  want  of  literal  accuracy, by  quoting,  "Odds  life,  must 
one  swear  to  the  truth  of  a  song?"  But  this  recklessness 
of  epithet  and  description  did  much  to  make  O'Connell  dis- 
trusted and  disliked  in  England,  where,  in  whatever  heat  of 
political  controversy,  words  are  supposed  to  be  the  expres- 
sions of  some  manner  of  genuine  sentiment.  Of  course  many 
of  O'Connell's  abusive  epithets  were  not  only  full  of  humor, 
but  did,  to  some  extent,  fairly  represent  the  weaknesses  at 
least  of  those  against  whom  they  were  directed.  Some  of 
his  historical  allusions  were  of  a  more  mischievous  nature 
than  any  mere  personalities  could  have  been.  "Peel  and 
Wellington,"  he  said  at  Kilkenny,  "may  be  second  Croin- 
wells;  they  may  get  Cromwell's  blunted  truncheon,  and  they 
may — oh,  sacred  heavens! — enact  on  the  fair  occupants  of 
that  gallery"  (pointing  to  the  ladies'  gallery),  "the  murder 
of  the  Wexford  women.  Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  when  I 
made  that  appeal  to  the  ladies  it  was  but  a  flight  of  my  im- 
agination. No !  when  Cromwell  entered  the  town  of  Wex- 
ford by  treachery,  three  hundred  ladies,  the  beauty  and  love- 
I.— 9 


194  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

liness  of  Wexford,  the  young  and  the  old,  the  maid  and  the 
matron,  were  collected  round  the  Cross  of  Christ;  they  pray- 
ed to  Heaven  for  mercy,  and  I  hope  they  found  it ;  they 
prayed  to  the  English  for  humanity,  and  Cromwell  slaugh- 
tered them.  I  tell  you  this:  three  hundred  women,  the 
grace  and  beauty  and  virtue  of  Wexford,  were  slaughtered 
by  the  English  ruffians — sacred  heaven !"  He  went  on  then 
to  assure  his  hearers  that  "  the  ruffianly  Saxon  paper,  the 
Times,  in  the  number  received  by  me  to-day,  presumes  to 
threaten  us  again  with  such  a  scene."  One  would  like  to 
see  the  copy  of  the  Times  which  contained  such  a  threat, 
or,  indeed,  any  words  that  could  be  tortured  iuto  a  sem- 
blance of  any  such  hideous  meaning.  But  the  great  agita- 
tor, when  he  found  that  he  had  excited  enough  the  horror 
of  his  audience,  proceeded  to  reassure  them  by  the  means 
of  all  others  most  objectionable  and  dangerous  at  such  a 
time.  "  I  am  not  imaginative,"  he  said,  "  when  I  talk  of  the 
possibility  of  such  scenes  anew  ;  but  yet  I  assert  that  there 
is  no  danger  to  our  women  now,  for  the  men  of  Ireland 
would  die  to  the  last  in  their  defence."  Here  the  whoJe 
meeting  broke  into  a  storm  of  impassioned  cheering.  "Ay," 
the  orator  exclaimed,  when  the  storm  found  a  momentary 
hush,  "  we  were  a  paltry  remnant  then;  we  are  millions 
now."  At  Mullaghmast,  O'Connell  made  an  impassioned 
allusion  to  the  massacre  of  Irish  chieftains,  said  to  have 
taken  place  on  that  very  spot  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth. "Three  hundred  and  ninety  Irish  chiefs  perished 
here !  They  came,  confiding  in  Saxon  honor,  relying  on 
the  protection  of  the  Queen,  to  a  friendly  conference.  In 
the  midst  of  revelry,  in  the  cheerful  light  of  the  banquet- 
house,  they  were  surrounded  and  butchered.  None  return- 
ed save  one.  Their  wives  were  widows,  their  children  fa- 
therless. In  their  homesteads  was  heard  the  shrill  shriek 
of  despair — the  cry  of  bitter  agony.  Oh,  Saxon  cruelty, 
how  it  cheers  my  heart  to  think  that  you  dare  not  attempt 
such  a  deed  again  !"  It  is  not  necessary  to  point  out  what 
the  effect  of  such  descriptions  and  such  allusions  must  have 
been  upon  an  excitable  and  an  ignorant  peasant  audience — 
on  men  who  were  ready  to  believe  in  all  sincerity  that  Eng- 
land only  wanted  the  opportunity  to  re-enact,  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Victoria,  the  scenes  of  Elizabeth's  or  Cromwell's  day. 


THE   REPEAL   YEAR.  195 

The  Late  Lord  Lytton  has  given,  in  his  poem  "  St.  Ste- 
phens," a  picturesque  description  of  one  of  these  meetings, 
and  of  the  effect  produced  upon  himself  by  O'Connell's  elo- 
quence. "  Once  to  my  sight,"  he  says,  "  the  giant  thus  was 
given  ;  walled  by  wide  air  and  roofed  by  boundless  heaven." 
He  describes  "  the  human  ocean  "  lying  spread  out  at  the 
giant's  feet ;  its  "  wave  on  wave"  flowing "  into  space  away." 
Not  unnaturally,  Lord  Lytton  thought,  "no  clarion  could 
have  sent  its  sound  even  to  the  centre"  of  that  crowd. 

"And  as  I  thought,  rose  the  sonorous  swell 
As  from  some  church  tower  swings  the  silvery  bell; 
Aloft  and  clear  from  airy  tide  to  tide, 
It  glided  easy  as  a  bird  may  glide. 
To  the  last  verge  of  that  vast  audience  sent, 
It  played  with  each  wild  passion  as  it  went ; 
Now  stirred  the  uproar — now  the  murmur  stilled, 
And  sobs  or  laughter  answered  as  it  willed. 
Then  did  I  know  what  spells  of  infinite  choice 
To  rouse  or  lull  has  the  sweet  human  voice. 
Then  did  I  learn  to  seize  the  sudden  clew 
To  the  grand  troublous  life  antique — to  view, 
Under  the  rock-stand  of  Demosthenes, 
Unstable  Athens  heave  her  noisy  seas." 

The  crowds  who  attended  the  monster  meetings  came  in 
a  sort  of  military  order  and  with  a  certain  parade  of  military 
discipline.  At  the  meeting  held  on  the  Hill  of  Tara,  where 
O'Connell  stood  beside  the  stone  said  to  have  been  used  for 
the  coronation  of  the  ancient  monarchs  of  Ireland,  it  is  de- 
clared, on  the  authority  of  careful  and  unsympathetic  wit- 
nesses, that  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  people  must  have  been 
present.  The  Government  naturally  felt  that  there  was  a 
very  considerable  danger  in  the  massing  together  of  such 
vast  crowds  of  men  in  something  like  military  array  and  un- 
der the  absolute  leadership  of  one  man,  who  openly  avowed 
that  he  had  called  them  together  to  show  England  what 
was  the  strength  her  statesmen  would  have  to  fear  if  they 
continued  to  deny  Repeal  to  his  demand.  It  is  certain  now 
that  O'Connell  did  not  at  any  time  mean  to  employ  force 
for  the  attainment  of  his  ends.  But  it  is  equally  certain  that 
he  wished  the  English  Government  to  see  that  he  had  the 
command  of  an  immense  number  of  men,  and  probably  even 
to  believe  that  he  would,  if  needs  were,  hurl  them  in  rebel- 


196  A  HISTOEY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

lion  upon  England  if  ever  she  should  be  embarrassed  with 
a  foreign  war.  It  is  certain,  too,  that  many  of  O'Connell's 
most  ardent  admirers,  especially  among  the  young  men, 
were  fully  convinced  that  some  day  or  other  their  leader 
would  call  on  them  to  fight,  and  were  much  disappointed 
when  they  found  that  he  had  no  such  intention.  The  Gov- 
ernment at  last  resolved  to  interfere.  A  meeting  was  an- 
nounced to  be  held  at  Clontarf  on  Sunday,  October  8th,  1843. 
Clontarf  is  near  Dublin,  and  is  famous  in  Irish  history  as  the 
scene  of  a  great  victory  of  the  Irish  over  their  Danish  in- 
vaders. It  was  intended  that  this  meeting  should  surpass 
in  numbers  and  in  earnestness  the  assemblage  at  Tara.  On 
the  very  day  before  the  8th  the  Lord -lieutenant  issued  a 
proclamation  prohibiting  the  meeting  as  "calculated  to  ex- 
cite reasonable  and  well-grounded  apprehension,"  in  that  its 
object  was  "to  accomplish  alterations  in  the  laws  and  con- 
stitution of  the  realm  by  intimidation  and  the  demonstra- 
tion of  physical  force."  O'Connell's  power  over  the  people 
was  never  shown  more  effectively  than  in  the  control  which 
at  that  critical  moment  he  was  still  able  to  exercise.  The 
populations  were  already  coming  in  to  Clontarf  in  streams 
from  all  the  country  round  when  the  proclamation  of  the 
Lord  -  lieutenant  was  issued.  No  doubt  the  Irish  Govern- 
ment ran  a  terrible  risk  when  they  delayed  so  long  the  issue 
of  their  proclamation.  With  the  people  already  assembling 
in  such  masses,  the  risk  of  a  collision  with  the  police  and  the 
soldiery,  and  of  a  consequent  massacre,  is  something  still 
shocking  to  contemplate.  It  is  not  surprising,  perhaps,  if 
O'Connell  and  many  of  his  followers  made  it  a  charge  against 
the  Government  that  they  intended  to  bring  about  such  a 
collision  in  order  to  make  an  example  of  some  of  the  Repeal- 
ers, and  thus  strike  terror  through  the  country.  Some  sort 
of  collision  would  almost  undoubtedly  have  occurred  but  for 
the  promptitude  of  O'Connell  himself.  He  at  once  issued  a 
proclamation  of  his  own  to  which  the  populations  were  like- 
ly to  pay  far  more  attention  than  they  would  to  anything 
coming  from  Dublin  Castle.  O'Connell  declared  that  the  or- 
ders of  the  Lord-lieutenant  must  be  obeyed ;  that  the  meet- 
ing must  not  take  place;  and  that  the  people  must  return  to 
their  homes.  The  "  uncrowned  king,"  as  some  of  his  admirers 
loved  to  call  him,  was  obeyed,  and  no  tj.eeting  was  held. 


THE   REPEAL   YEAR  197 

From  that  moment,  however,  the  great  power  of  the  Re- 
peal agitation  was  gone.  The  Government  had  accomplish- 
ed far  more  by  their  proclamation  than  they  could  possibly 
have  imagined  at  the  time.  They  had,  without  knowing  it, 
compelled  O'Connell  to  show  his  hand.  It  was  now  made 
clear  that  he  did  not  intend  to  have  resort  to  force.  From 
that  hour  there  was  virtually  a  schism  between  the  elder 
Repealers  and  the  younger.  The  young  and  fiery  followers 
of  the  great  agitator  lost  all  faith  in  him.  It  would  in  any 
case  have  been  impossible  to  maintain  for  any  very  long  time 
the  state  of  national  tension  in  which  Ireland  had  been  kept. 
It  must  soon  come  either  to  a  climax  or  to  an  anti-climax. 
It  came  to  an  anti-climax.  All  the  imposing  demonstrations 
of  physical  strength  lost  their  value  when  it  was  made  posi- 
tively known  that  they  were  only  demonstrations,  and  that 
nothing  was  ever  to  come  of  them.  The  eye  of  an  attentive 
foreigner  was  then  fixed  on  Ireland  and  on  O'Connell ;  the 
eye  of  one  destined  to  play  a  part  in  the  political  history  of 
our  time  which  none  other  has  surpassed.  Count  Cavour  had 
not  long  returned  to  his  own  country  from  a  visit  made  with 
the  express  purpose  of  studying  the  politics  and  the  gen- 
eral condition  of  England  and  Ireland.  He  wrote  to  a  friend 
about  the  crisis  then  passing  in  Ireland.  "  When  one  is  at 
a  distance,"  he  said, "  from  the  theatre  of  events,  it  is  easy 
to  make  prophecies  which  have  already  been  contradicted  by 
facts.  But  according  to  my  view  O'Conneli's  fate  is  sealed. 
On  the  first  vigorous  demonstration  of  his  opponents  he  has 
drawn  back;  from  that  moment  he  has  ceased  to  be  danger- 

J  O 

ous."  Cavour  was  perfectly  right.  It  was  never  again  pos- 
sible to  bring  the  Irish  people  up  to  the  pitch  of  enthusiasm 
which  O'Connell  had  wrought  them  to  before  the  suppres- 
sion of  the  Clontarf  meeting;  and  before  long  the  Irish  na- 
tional movement  had  split  in  two. 

The  Government  at  once  proceeded  to  the  prosecution  of 
O'Conuell  and  some  of  his  principal  associates.  Daniel 
O'Connell  himself,  his  son  John,  the  late  Sir  John  Gray,  and 
Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  were  the  most  conspicuous  of  those 
against  whom  the  prosecution  was  directed.  They  were 
charged  with  conspiring  to  raise  and  excite  disaffection 
among  her  Majesty's  subjects,  to  excite  them  to  hatred  and 
contempt  of  the  Government  and  Constitution  of  the  realm. 


198  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

The  trial  was,  in  many  ways,  a  singularly  unfortunate  pro- 
ceeding. The  Government  prosecutor  objected  to  all  the 
Catholics  whose  names  were  called  as  jurors.  An  error  of 
the  sheriff's  in  the  construction  of  the  jury-lists  had  already 
reduced  by  a  considerable  number  the  roll  of  Catholics  en- 
titled to  serve  on  juries.  It  therefore  happened  that  the 
greatest  of  Irish  Catholics,  the  representative  Catholic  of 
his  day,  the  principal  agent  in  the  work  of  carrying  Catho- 
lic Emancipation,  was  tried  by  a  jury  composed  exclusively 
of  Protestants.  It  has  only  to  be  added  that  this  was  done 
in  the  metropolis  of  a  country  essentially  Catholic;  a  conn- 
try  five-sixths  of  whose  people  were  Catholics;  and  on  a 
question  affecting  indirectly,  if  not  directly,  the  whole  posi- 
tion and  claims  of  Catholics.  The  trial  was  long.  O'Connell 
defended  himself;  and  his  speech  was  universally  regarded 
as  wanting  the  power  that  had  made  his  defence  of  others 
so  effective  in  former  days.  It  was  for  the  most  part  a  sober 
and  somewhat  heavy  argument  to  prove  that  Ireland  had 
lost  instead  of  gained  by  her  union  with  England.  The  jury 
found  O'Connell  guilty,  along  with  most  of  his  associates,  and 
he  was  sentenced  to  twelve  months'  imprisonment  and  a  fine 
of  £2000.  The  others  received  lighter  sentences.  O'Connell 
appealed  to  the  House  of  Lords  against  the  sentence.  In 
the  mean  time  he  issued  a  proclamation  to  the  Irish  people 
commanding  them  to  keep  perfectly  quiet  and  not  to  com- 
mit any  offence  against  the  law.  "  Every  man,"  said  one  of 
his  proclamations, "  who  is  guilty  of  the  slightest  breach  of 
the  peace  is  an  enemy  of  me  and  of  Ireland."  The  Irish  peo- 
ple took  him  at  his  word,  and  remained  perfectly  quiet. 

O'Connell  and  his  principal  associates  were  committed  to 
Richmond  Prison,  in  Dublin.  The  trial  had  been  delayed 
in  various  ways,  and  the  sentence  was  not  pronounced  until 
May  24th,  1844.  The  appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords — we 
may  pass  over  intermediate  stages  of  procedure — was  heard 
in  the  following  September.  Five  law  lords  were  present. 
The  Lord  Chancellor  (Lord  Lyndhurst)  and  Lord  Brougham 
were  of  opinion  that  the  sentence  of  the  court  below  should 
be  affirmed.  Lord  Denman,  Lord  Cottenham,  and  Lord 
Campbell  were  of  the  opposite  opinion.  Lord  Denman,  in 
particular,  condemned  the  manner  in  which  the  jury-lists 
had  been  prepared.  Some  of  his  words  on  the  occasion  be- 


THE   REPEAL  YEAR.  199 

came  memorable,  and  passed  into  a  sort  of  proverbial  ex- 
pression. Such  practices,  he  said,  would  make  of  the  law  "a 
mockery,  a  delusion,  and  a  snare."  A  strange  and  memora- 
ble scene  followed.  The  constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords 
then,  and  for  a  long  time  after,  made  no  difference  between 
law  lords  and  others  in  voting  on  a  question  of  appeal.  As 
a  matter  of  practice  and  of  fairness  the  lay  peers  hardly 
ever  interfered  in  the  voting  on  an  appeal.  But  they  had 
an  undoubted  right  to  do  so ;  and  it  is  even  certain  that  in 
one  or  two  peculiar  cases  they  had  exercised  the  right.  If 
the  lay  lords  were  to  vote  in  this  instance,  the  fate  of  O'Con- 
nell  and  his  companions  could  not  be  doubtful.  O'Connell 
had  always  been  the  bitter  enemy  of  the  House  of  Lords. 
He  had  vehemently  denounced  its  authority,  its  practices, 
and  its  leading  members.  Nor,  if  the  lay  peers  had  voted 
and  confirmed  the  judgment  of  the  court  below,  could  it 
have  been  positively  said  that  an  injustice  was  done  by  their 
interference.  The  majority  of  the  judges  on  the  writ  of  er- 
ror had  approved  the  judgment  of  the  court  below.  In  the 
House  of  Lords  itself  the  Lord  Chancellor  and  Lord  Brough- 
am were  of  opinion  that  the  judgment  ought  to  be  sustained. 
There  would,  therefore,  have  been  some  ground  for  main- 
taining that  the  substantial  justice  of  the  case  had  been  met 
by  the  action  of  the  lay  peers.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would 
have  afforded  a  ground  for  a  positive  outcry  in  Ireland  if  a 
question  purely  of  law  had  been  decided  by  tho  votes  of  lay 
peers  against  their  bitter  enemy.  One  peer,  Lord  Wharn- 
eliffe,  made  a  timely  appeal  to  the  better  judgment  and  feel- 
ing of  his  brethren.  He  urged  them  not  to  take  a  course 
which  might  allow  any  one  to  say  that  political  or  personal 
feeling  had  prevailed  in  a  judicial  decision  of  the  House  of 
Lords.  The  appeal  had  its  effect.  A  moment  before  one 
lay  peer  at  least  had  openly  declared  that  he  would  insist 
on  his  right  to  vote.  When  the  Lord  Chancellor  was  about 
to  put  the  question  in  the  first  instance,  to  ascertain  in  the 
usual  way  whether  a  division  would  be  necessary,  several 
lay  peers  seemed  as  if  they  were  determined  to  vote.  But 
the  appeal  of  Lord  Wharncliffe  settled  the  matter.  All  the 
lay  peers  at  once  withdrew,  and  left  the  matter  according  to 
the  usual  course  in  the  hands  of  the  law  lords.  The  majority 
of  these  being  against  the  judgment  of  the  court  below,  it 


200  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

was  accordingly  reversed,  and  O'Connell  and  his  associates 
were  set  at  liberty.  The  propriety  of  a  lay  peer  voting  on 
a  question  of  judicial  appeal  was  never  raised  again  so  long 
as  the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  House  of  Lords  was  still 
exercised  in  the  old  and  now  obsolete  fashion. 

Nothing  could  well  have  been  more  satisfactory  and  more 
fortunate  in  its  results  than  the  conduct  of  the  House  of 
Lords.  The  effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  Irish  people  would 
have  been  deplorable  if  it  had  been  seen  that  O'Connell  was 
convicted  by  a  jury  on  which  there  were  no  Roman  Catho- 
lics, and  that  the  sentence  was  confirmed,  not  by  a  judicial 
but  by  a  strictly  political  vote  of  the  House  of  Lords.  As 
it  was,  the  influence  of  the  decision  which  proved  that  even 
in  the  assembly  most  bitterly  denounced  by  O'Connell  he 
could  receive  fair  play,  was  in  the  highest  degree  satisfactory. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  it  did  something  to  weaken  the 
force  of  O'Connell's  own  denunciations  of  Saxon  treachery 
and  wrong-doing.  The  influence  of  O'Connell  was  never 
the  same  after  the  trial.  Many  causes  combined  to  bring 
about  this  result.  Most  writers  ascribe  it,  above  all,  to  the 
trial  itself,  and  the  evidence  it  afforded  that  the  English 
Government  were  strong  enough  to  prosecute  and  punish 
even  O'Connell  if  he  provoked  them  too  far.  It  is  some- 
what surprising  to  find  intelligent  men  like  Mr.  Green,  the 
author  of  "A  Short  History  of  the  English  People,"  coun- 
tenancing such  a  belief.  If  the  House  of  Lords  had,  by  the 
votes  of  the  lay  peers,  confirmed  the  sentence  on  O'Connell, 
he  would  have  come  out  of  his  prison  at  the  expiration  of 
his  period  of  sentence  more  popular  and  more  powerful  than 
ever.  Had  his  strength  and  faculty  of  agitation  lasted,  he 
might  have  agitated  thenceforth  with  more  effect  than  ever. 
If  the  Clontarf  meeting  had  not  disclosed  to  a  large  section 
of  his  followers  that  his  policy,  after  all,  was  only  to  be  one 
of  talk,  he  might  have  come  out  of  prison  just  the  man  he 
had  been,  the  leader  of  all  classes  of  Catholics  and  Nation- 
alists. But  the  real  blow  given  to  O'Connell's  popularity 
was  given  by  O'Connell  himself.  The  moment  it  was  made 
clear  that  nothing  was  to  be  done  but  agitate,  and  that  all 
the  monster  meetings,  the  crowds  and  banners  and  bands 
of  music,  the  marshalling  and  marching  and  reviewing, 
meant  nothing  more  than  Father  Mathew's  temperance 


THE   REPEAL   YEAR.  201 

meetings  meant — that  moment  all  the  youth  of  the  move- 
ment fell  off  from  O'Connell.  The  young  men  were  very 
silly,  as  after-events  proved.  O'Connell  was  far  more  wise, 
and  had  an  infinitely  better  estimate  of  the  strength  of  Eng- 
land than  they  had.  But  it  is  certain  that  the  young  men 
were  disgusted  with  the  kind  of  gigantic  sham  which  the 
great  agitator  seemed  to  have  been  conducting  for  so  long  a 
time.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  keep  up  forever 
such  an  excitement  as  that  which  got  together  the  monster 
meetings.  Such  heat  cannot  be  brought  up  to  the  burning- 
point  and  kept  there  at  will.  A  reaction  was  inevitable. 
O'Connell  was  getting  old,  and  had  lived  a  life  of  work  and 
wear-and-tear  enough  to  break  down  even  his  constitution 
of  iron.  He  had  kept  a  great  part  of  his  own  followers  in 
heart,  as  he  had  kept  the  Government  in  alarm,  by  leaving 
it  doubtful  whether  he  would  not,  in  the  end,  make  an  appeal 
to  the  reserve  of  physical  force  which  he  so  often  boasted 
of  having  at  his  back.  When  the  whole  secret  was  out,  he 
ceased  to  be  an  object  of  fear  to  the  one,  and  of  enthusiasm 
to  the  other.  It  was  neither  the  Lord-lieutenant's  procla- 
mation nor  the  prosecution  by  the  Government  that  impair- 
ed the  influence  of  O'Connell.  It  was  O'Connell's  own  proc- 
lamation, declaring  for  submission  to  the  law,  that  dethroned 
him.  From  that  moment  the  political  monarch  had  to  dis- 
pute with  rebels  for  his  crown ;  and  the  crown  fell  off  in 
the  struggle,  like  that  which  Uhland  tells  of  in  the  pretty 
poem. 

For  the  Clontarf  meeting  had  been  the  climax.  There 
was  all  manner  of  national  rejoicing  when  the  decision  of 
the  House  of  Lords  set  O'Connell  and  his  fellow-prisoners 
free.  There  were  illuminations  and  banquets  and  meetings 
and  triumphal  processions,  renewed  declarations  of  alle- 
giance to  the  great  leader,  and  renewed  protestations  on 
his  part  that  Repeal  was  coming.  But  his  reign  was  over. 
His  death  may  as  well  be  recorded  here  as  later.  His 
health  broke  down ;  and  the  disputes  in  which  he  became 
engaged  with  the  Young  Irelanders,  dividing  his  party  into 
two  hostile  camps,  were  a  grievous  burden  to  him.  In  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  a  very  touch- 
ing description  is  given  of  the  last  speech  made  by  O'Con- 
nell in  Parliament.  It  was  on  April  3d,  1846  :  "His  appear- 

9* 


202  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ance,"  says  Mr.  Disraeli,  "  was  of  great  debility,  and  the 
tones  of  his  voice  were  very  still.  His  words,  indeed,  only 
reached  those  who  were  immediately  around  him,  and  the 
ministers  sitting  on  the  other  side  of  the  green  table,  and 
listening  with  that  interest  and  respectful  attention  which 
became  the  occasion."  O'Connell  spoke  for  nearly  two 
hours.  "  It  was  a  strange  and  touching  spectacle  to  those 
•who  remembered  the  form  of  colossal  energy  and  the  clear 
and  thrilling  tones  that  had  once  startled,  disturbed,  and 
controlled  senates.  ...  To  the  House,  generally,  it  was  a 
performance  in  dumb  show:  a  feeble  old  man  muttering  be- 
fore a  table;  but  respect  for  the  great  Parliamentary  per- 
sonage kept  all  as  orderly  as  if  the  fortunes  of  a  party  hung 
upon  his  rhetoric;  and  though  not  an  accent  reached  the 
gallery,  means  were  taken  that  next  morning  the  country 
should  not  lose  the  last,  and  not  the  least  interesting,  of  the 
speeches  of  one  who  had  so  long  occupied  and  agitated  the 
mind  of  nations." 

O'Connell  became  seized  with  a  profound  melancholy. 
Only  one  desire  seemed  left  to  him,  the  desire  to  close  his 
stormy  career  in  Rome.  The  Eternal  City  is  the  capital, 
the  shrine,  the  Mecca  of  the  Church  to  which  O'Connell  was 
undoubtedly  devoted  with  all  his  heart.  He  longed  to  lie 
down  in  the  shadow  of  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  and  rest 
there,  and  there  die.  His  youth  had  been  wild  in  more  ways 
than  one,  and  he  had  long  been  under  the  influence  of  a  pro- 
found penitence.  He  had  killed  a  man  in  a  duel,  and  was 
through  all  his  after-life  haunted  by  regret  for  the  deed,  al- 
though it  was  really  forced  on  him,  and  he  had  acted  only 
as  any  other  man  of  his  time  would  have  acted  in  such  con- 
ditions. But  now,  in  his  old  and  sinking  days,  all  the  errors 
of  his  youth  and  his  strong  manhood  came  back  upon  him, 
and  he  longed  to  steep  the  painful  memories  in  the  sacred 
influences  of  Rome.  He  hurried  to  Italy  at  a  time  when 
the  prospect  of  the  famine  darkening  down  upon  his  coun- 
try cast  an  additional  shadow  across  his  outward  path.  He 
reached  Genoa,  and  he  went  no  farther.  His  strength  wholly 
failed  him  there,  and  he  died,  still  far  from  Rome,  on  May 
15th,  1847.  The  close  of  his  career  was  a  mournful  collapse ; 
it  was  like  the  sudden  crumbling  in  of  some  stately  and 
commanding  tower.  The  other  day,  it  seemed,  he  filled  a 


PEEL'S   ADMINISTRATION.  203 

space  of  almost  unequalled  breadth  and  height  in  the  polit- 
ical landscape;  and  now  he  is  already  gone.  "Even  with 
a  thought  the  rack  dislimbs,  and  makes  it  indistinct,  as  wa- 
ter is  in  water." 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION. 

SOME  important  steps  in  the  progress  of  what  may  be  de- 
scribed as  social  legislation  are  part  of  the  history  of  Peel's 
Government.  The  Act  of  Parliament  which  prohibited  ab- 
solutely the  employment  of  women  and  girls  in  mines  and 
collieries  was  rendered  unavoidable  by  the  fearful  exposures 
made  through  the  instrumentality  of  a  commission  appoint- 
ed to  inquire  into  the  whole  subject.  This  commission  was 
appointed  on  the  motion  of  the  then  Lord  Ashley,  since  bet- 
ter known  as  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  a  man  who  during  the 
whole  of  a  long  career  has  always  devoted  himself — some- 
times wisely  and  successfully,  sometimes  indiscreetly  and  to 
little  purpose,  always  with  disinterested  and  benevolent  in- 
tention— to  the  task  of  brightening  the  lives  and  lightening 
the  burdens  of  the  working-classes  and  the  poor.  The  com- 
mission found  many  hideous  evils  arising  from  the  employ- 
ment of  women  and  girls  underground,  and  Lord  Ashley 
made  such  effective  use  of  their  disclosures  that  he  encoun- 
tered very  little  opposition  when  he  came  to  propose  re- 
strictive legislation.  In  some  of  the  coal-mines  women  were 
literally  employed  as  beasts  of  burden.  Where  the  seam  of 
coal  was  too  narrow  to  allow  them  to  stand  upright,  they 
had  to  crawl  back  and  forward  on  all-fours  for  fourteen  or 
sixteen  hours  a  day,  dragging  the  trucks  laden  with  coals. 
The  trucks  were  generally  fastened  to  a  chain  which  passed 
between  the  legs  of  the  unfortunate  women,  and  was  then 
connected  with  a  belt  which  was  strapped  round  their  naked 
waists.  Their  only  clothing  often  consisted  of  an  old  pair 
of  trousers  made  of  sacking  ;  and  they  were  uncovered  from 
the  waist  up — uncovered,  that  is  to  say,  except  for  the  grime 
and  filth  that  collected  and  clotted  around  them.  All  man- 
ner of  hideous  diseases  were  generated  in  these  unsexed  bod- 


204:  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ies.  Unsexed  almost  literally  some  of  them  became ;  for 
their  chests  were  often  hard  and  flat  as  those  of  men  ;  and 
not  a  few  of  them  lost  all  reproductive  power — a  happy  con- 
dition, truly,  under  the  circumstances,  where  women  who 
bore  children  only  went  up  to  the  higher  air  for  a  week 
during  their  confinement,  and  were  then  back  at  their  work 
again.  It  would  be  superfluous  to  say  that  the  immorality 
engendered  by  such  a  state  of  things  was  in  exact  keeping 
with  the  other  evils  which  it  brought  about.  Lord  Ashley 
had  the  happiness  and  the  honor  of  putting  a  stop  to  this 
infamous  sort  of  labor  forever  by  the  Act  of  1842,  which  de- 
clared that,  after  a  certain  limited  period,  no  woman  or  girl 
whatever  should  be  employed  in  mines  and  collieries. 

Lord  Ashley  was  less  completely  successful  in  his  en- 
deavor to  secure  a  ten  hours'  limitation  for  the  daily  labor 
of  women  and  young  persons  in  factories.  By  a  vigorous 
annual  agitation  on  the  general  subject  of  factory  labor,  in 
which  Lord  Ashley  had  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  Mr. 
Michael  Thomas  Sadler,  he  brought  the  Government  up  to 
the  point  of  undertaking  legislation  on  the  subject.  They 
first  introduced  a  bill  which  combined  a  limitation  of  the 
labor  of  children  in  factories  with  a  plan  for  compulsory  ed- 
ucation among  the  children.  The  educational  clauses  of  the 
bill  had  to  be  abandoned  in  consequence  of  a  somewhat  nar- 
row-minded opposition  among  the  Dissenters,  who  feared 
that  too  much  advantage  was  given  to  the  Church.  After- 
ward the  Government  brought  in  another  bill,  which  be- 
came, in  the  end,  the  Factories  Act  of  1844.  It  was  during 
the  passing  of  this  measure  that  Lord  Ashley  tried  unsuc- 
cessfully to  introduce  his  ten  hours'  limit.  The  bill  dimin- 
ished the  working  hours  of  children  under  thirteen  years  of 
age,  and  fixed  them  at  six  and  a  half  hours  each  day ;  ex- 
tended somewhat  the  time  during  which  they  were  to  be 
under  daily  instruction,  and  did  a  good  many  other  useful 
and  wholesome  things.  The  principle  of  legislative  inter- 
ference to  protect  youthful  workers  in  factories  had  been 
already  established  by  the  Act  of  1833,  and  Lord  Ashley's 
agitation  only  obtained  for  it  a  somewhat  extended  appli- 
cation. It  has  since  that  time  again  and  again  received  fur- 
ther extension  ;  and  in  this  time,  as  in  the  former,  there  is  a 
constant  controversy  going  on  as  to  whether  its  principles 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION.  205 

ought  not  to  be  so  extended  as  to  guard  in  almost  every 
way  the  labor  of  adult  women,  and  even  of  adult  men.  The 
controversy  during  Lord  Ashley's  agitation  was  always 
warm  and  often  impassioned.  Many  thoroughly  benevo- 
lent men  and  women  could  not  bring  themselves  to  believe 
that  any  satisfactory  and  permanent  results  could  come  of 
a  legislative  interference  with  what  might  be  called  the 
freedom  of  contract  between  employers  and  employed. 
They  argued  that  it  was  idle  to  say  the  interference  was 
only  made  or  sought  in  the  case  of  women  and  boys ;  for  if 
the  women  and  boys  stop  off  working,  they  pointed  out, 
the  men  must  perforce  in  most  cases  stop  off  working  too. 
Some  of  the  public  men  afterward  most  justly  popular 
among  the  English  artisan  classes  were  opposed  to  the 
measure  on  the  ground  that  it  was  a  heedless  attempt  to  in- 
terfere with  fixed  economic  laws.  It  was  urged,  too,  and 
with  much  semblance  of  justice,  that  the  interference  of  the 
State  for  the  protection  or  the  compulsory  education  of 
children  in  factories  would  have  been  much  better  employ- 
ed, and  was  far  more  loudly  called  for,  in  the  case  of  the 
children  employed  in  agricultural  labor.  The  lot  of  a  fac- 
tory child,  it  was  contended,  is  infinitely  better  in  most  re- 
spects than  that  of  the  poor  little  creature  who  is  employed 
in  hallooing  at  the  crows  on  a  farm.  The  mill-hand  is  well 
cared  for,  well  paid,  well  able  to  care  for  himself  and  his 
wife  and  his  family,  it  was  argued ;  but  what  of  the  miser- 
able Giles  Scroggins  of  Dorsetshire  or  Somersetshire,  who 
never  has  more  in  all  his  life  than  just  enough  to  keep  body 
and  soul  together ;  and  for  whom,  at  the  close,  the  work- 
house is  the  only  haven  of  rest  ?  Why  not  legislate  for  him 
— at  least  for  his  wife  and  children  ? 

Neither  point  requires  much  consideration  from  us  at 
present.  We  have  to  recognize  historical  facts ;  and  it  is 
certain  that  this  country  has  made  up  its  mind  that  for  the 
present  and  for  a  long  time  to  come  Parliament  will  inter- 
fere in  whatever  way  seems  good  to  it  with  the  conditions 
on  which  labor  is  carried  on.  There  has  been,  indeed,  a  very 
marked  advance  or  retrogression,  whichever  men  may  please 
to  call  it,  in  public  opinion  since  the  ten  hours'  agitation. 
At  that  time  compulsory  education  and  the  principles  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  Irish  Land  Act  would  have  seemed  alike 


206  A   HISTOBY  OF   OUE  OWN   TIMES. 

impossible  to  most  persons  in  this  country.  The  practical 
mind  of  the  Englishman  carries  to  an  extreme  the  dislike 
and  contempt  for  what  the  French  call  les  principes  in  pol- 
itics. Therefore  we  oscillate  a  good  deal,  the  pendulum 
swinging  now  very  far  in  the  direction  of  non-interference 
with  individual  action,  and  now  still  farther  in  the  direc- 
tion of  universal  interference  and  regulation — what  was  once 
humorously  described  as  grandmotherly  legislation.  With 
our  recent  experiences  we  can  only  be  surprised  that  a  few 
years  ago  there  was  such  a  repugnance  to  the  modest 
amount  of  interference  with  individual  rights  which  Lord 
Ashley's  extremest  proposals  would  have  sought  to  intro- 
duce. As  regards  the  other  point,  it  is  certain  that  Parlia- 
ment will  at  one  time  or  another  do  for  the  children  in  the 
fields  something  very  like  that  which  it  has  done  for  the 
children  in  the  factories.  It  is  enough  for  us  to  know  that 
practically  the  factory  legislation  has  worked  very  well ; 
and  that  the  non-interference  in  the  fields  is  a  far  heavier  re- 
sponsibility on  the  conscience  of  Parliament  than  interfer- 
ence in  the  factories. 

Many  other  things  done  by  Sir  Robert  Peel's  Government 
aroused  bitter  controversy  and  agitation.  In  one  or  two  re- 
markable instances  the  ministerial  policy  went  near  to  pro- 
ducing that  discord  in  the  Conservative  party  which  we  shall 
presently  see  break  out  into  passion  and  schism  when  Peel 
came  to  deal  with  the  Corn-laws.  There  was,  for  example, 
the  grant  to  the  Roman  Catholic  College  of  Maynooth,  a 
college  for  the  education  specially  of  young  men  who  sought 
to  enter  the  ranks  of  the  priesthood.  The  grant  was  not  a 
new  thing.  Since  before  the  Act  of  Union  a  grant  had  been 
made  for  the  college.  The  Government  of  Sir  Robert  Peel 
only  proposed  to  make  that  which  was  insufficient  sufficient; 
to  enable  the  college  to  be  kept  in  repair,  and  to  accomplish 
the  purpose  for  which  it  was  founded.  As  Macaulay  put  it, 
there  was  no  more  question  of  principle  involved  than  there 
would  be  in  the  sacrifice  of  a  pound  instead  of  a  penny- 
weight on  some  particular  altar.  Yet  the  ministerial  prop- 
osition called  up  a  very  tempest  of  clamorous  bigotry  all 
over  the  country.  What  Macaulay  described  in  fierce  scorn 
as  "the  bray  of  Exeter  Hall"  was  heard  resounding  every 
day  and  night.  Peel  carried  his  measure,  although  nearly 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION.  207 

half  his  own  party  in  the  House  of  Commons  voted  against 
it  on  the  second  reading.  The  whole  controversy  has  little 
interest  now.  Perhaps  it  will  be  found  to  live  in  the  mem- 
ory of  many  persons,  chiefly  because  of  the  quarrel  it  caused 
between  Macaulay  and  his  Edinburgh  constituents,  and  of 
the  annual  motion  for  the  withdrawal  of  the  grant  which 
was  so  long  afterward  one  of  the  regular  bores  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  Many  of  us  can  well  remember  the  venerable 
form  of  the  late  Mr.  Spooner  as  year  after  year  he  address- 
ed an  apathetic,  scanty,  and  half-amused  audience,  pottering 
over  his  papers  by  the  light  of  two  candles  specially  placed 
for  his  convenience  on  the  table  in  front  of  the  Speaker,  and 
endeavoring  in  vain  to  arouse  England  to  serious  attention 
on  the  subject  of  the  awful  fate  she  was  preparing  for  her- 
self by  her  toleration  of  the  principles  of  Rome.  The  May- 
nooth  grant  was  abolished,  indeed,  not  long  after  Mr.  Spoon- 
er's  death  ;  but  the  manner  of  its  abolition  would  have  given 
him  less  comfort  even  than  its  introduction.  It  was  abol- 
ished when  Mr.  Gladstone's  Government  abolished  the  State 
Church  in  Ireland. 

Another  of  Peel's  measures  which  aroused  much  clamor 
on  both  sides  was  that  for  the  establishment  of  what  were 
afterward  called  the  "godless  colleges"  in  Ireland.  O'Con- 
nell  has  often  had  the  credit  of  applying  this  nickname  to 
the  new  colleges  ;  but  it  was,  in  fact,  from  the  extremest  of 
all  no-popery  men,  Sir  Robert  Harry  Inglis,  that  the  expres- 
sion came.  It  was,  indeed,  from  Sir  Robert  Inglis's  side  that 
the  first  note  sounded  of  opposition  to  the  scheme,  although 
O'Connell  afterward  took  it  vigorously  up,  and  the  Pope  and 
the  Irish  bishops  condemned  the  colleges. 

There  was  objection  within  the  ministry,  as  well  as  with- 
out. Mr.  Gladstone,  who  had  been  doing  admirable  work, 
first  as  Vice-president,  and  afterward  as  President,  of  the 
Board  of  Trade,  and  who  had  supported  the  Queen's  colleges 
scheme  by  voice  and  vote,  resigned  his  office  because  of  the 
Maynooth  grant.  He  acted,  perhaps,  with  a  too  sensitive 
chivalry.  He  had  written  a  work,  as  all  the  world  knows, 
on  the  relation  of  Church  and  State,  and  he  did  not  think 
the  views  expressed  in  that  book  left  him  free  to  co-oper- 
ate the  ministerial  measure.  Some  staid  politicians  were 
shocked  ;  many  more  smiled  ;  not  a  few  sneered.  The  public 


208  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

in  general  applauded  the  spirit  of  disinterestedness  which 
dictated  the  young  statesman's  act. 

The  proposal  of  the  Government  was  to  establish  in  Ire- 
land three  colleges — one  in  Cork,  the  second  in  Belfast,  and 
the  third  in  Galway — and  to  affiliate  these  to  a  new  univer- 
sity, to  be  called  the  "  Queen's  University  in  Ireland."  The 
teaching  in  these  colleges  was  to  be  purely  secular.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  admirable  than  the  intentions  of  Peel  and 
his  colleagues.  Nor  could  it  be  denied  that  there  might 

o  o 

have  been  good  seeming  hope  for  a  plan  which  thus  pro- 
posed to  open  a  sort  of  neutral  ground  in  the  educational 
controversy.  But  from  both  sides  of  the  House  and  from 
the  extreme  party  in  each  Church  came  an  equally  fierce 
denunciation  of  the  proposal  to  separate  secular  from  relig- 
ious education.  Nor,  surely,  could  the  claim  of  the  Irish 
Catholics  be  said  even  by  the  warmest  advocate  of  unde- 
nominational education  to  have  no  reason  on  its  side.  The 
small  minority  of  Protestants  in  Ireland  had  their  college 
and  their  university  established  as  a  distinctively  Protestant 
institution.  Why  should  not  the  great  majority  who  were 
Catholics  ask  for  something  of  the  same  kind  for  themselves  ? 
Peel  carried  his  measure ;  but  the  controversy  has  gone  on 
ever  since,  and  we  have  yet  to  see  whether  the  scheme  is  a 
success  or  a  failure. 

One  small  instalment  of  justice  to  a  much -injured  and 
long-suffering  religious  body  was  accomplished  without  any 
trouble  by  Sir  Robert  Peel's  Government.  This  was  the 
bill  for  removing  the  test  by  which  Jews  were  excluded 
from  certain  municipal  offices.  A  Jew  might  be  high-sheriff 
of  a  county,  or  sheriff  of  London,  but  with  an  inconsistency 
which  was  as  ridiculous  as  it  was  narrow-minded,  he  was 
prevented  from  becoming  a  mayor,  an  alderman,  or  even  a 
member  of  the  Common  Council.  The  oath  which  had  to 
be  taken  included  the  words  "on  the  true  faith  of  a  Chris- 
tian." Lord  Lyndhurst,  the  Lord  Chancellor,  introduced  a 
measure  to  get  rid  of  this  absurd  anomaly ;  and  the  House 
of  Lords,  who  had  firmly  rejected  similar  proposals  of  relief 
before,  passed  it  without  any  difficulty.  It  was,  of  course, 
passed  by  the  House  of  Commons,  which  had  done  its  best 
to  introduce  the  reform  in  previous  sessions,  and  without 
success. 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION-.  209 

The  Bank  Charter  Act,  separating  the  issue  from  the  bank- 
ing department  of  the  Bank  of  England,  limiting  the  issue 
of  notes  to  a  fixed  amount  of  securities,  and  requiring  the 
whole  of  the  further  circulation  to  be  on  a  basis  of  bullion, 
and  prohibiting  the  formation  of  any  new  banks  of  issue,  is 
a  characteristic  and  an  important  measure  of  Peel's  Govern- 
ment. To  Peel,  too,  we  owe  the  establishment  of  the  income- 
tax  on  its  present  basis — a  doubtful  boon.  The  copyright 
question  was,  at  least,  advanced  a  stage.  Railways  were  reg- 
ulated. The  railway  mania  and  railway  panic  also  belong 
to  this  active  period.  The  country  went  wild  with  railway 
speculations.  The  South  Sea  scheme  was  hardly  more  of  a 
bubble,  or  hardly  burst  more  suddenly  or  disastrously.  The 
vulgar  and  flashy  successes  of  one  or  two  lucky  adventurers 
turned  the  heads  of  the  whole  community.  For  a  time  it 
seemed  to  be  a  national  article  of  faith  that  the  capacity  of 
the  country  to  absorb  new  railway  schemes  and  make  them 
profitable  was  unlimited,  and  that  to  make  a  fortune  one  had 
only  to  take  shares  in  anything. 

An  odd  feature  of  the  time  was  the  outbreak  of  what  were 
called  the  Rebecca  riots  in  Wales.  These  riots  arose  out  of 
the  anger  and  impatience  of  the  people  at  the  great  increase 
of  toll-bars  and  tolls  on  the  public  roads.  Some  one,  it  was 
supposed,  had  hit  upon  a  passage  in  Genesis. which  supplies 
a  motto  for  their  grievance  and  their  complaint.  "And  they 
blessed  Rebekah,  and  said  unto  her  ...  let  thy  seed  possess 
the  gate  of  those  which  hate  them."  They  set  about,  ac- 
cordingly, to  possess  very  eflectually  the  gates  of  those  which 
hated  them.  Mobs  assembled  every  night,  destroyed  turn- 
pikes, and  dispersed.  They  met  with  little  molestation  in 
most  cases  for  awhile.  The  mobs  were  always  led  by  a  man 
in  woman's  clothes,  supposed  to  represent  the  typical  Rebec- 
ca. As  the  disturbances  went  on,  it  was  found  that  no  easi- 
er mode  of  disguise  could  be  got  than  a  woman's  clothes,  and, 
therefore,  in  many  of  the  riots  petticoats  might  almost  be 
said  to  be  the  uniform  of  the  insurgent  force.  Night  after 

O  £2 

night  for  months  these  midnight  musterings  took  place. 
Rebecca  and  her  daughters  became  the  terror  of  many  re- 
gions. As  the  work  went  on  it  became  more  serious.  Re- 
becca and  her  daughters  grew  bold.  There  were  conflicts 
with  the  police  and  with  the  soldiers.  It  is  to  be  feared 


210  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

that  men  and  even  women  died  for  Rebecca.  At  last  the 
Government  succeeded  in  putting  down  the  riots,  and  had 
the  wisdom  to  appoint  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  cause 
of  so  much  disturbance ;  and  the  commission,  as  will  readily 
be  imagined,  found  that  there  were  genuine  grievances  at  the 
bottom  of  the  popular  excitement.  The  farmers  and  the  la- 
borers were  poor;  the  tolls  were  seriously  oppressive.  The 
Government  dealt  lightly  with  most  of  the  rioters  who  had 
been  captured,  and  introduced  measures  which  removed  the 
grievances  most  seriously  complained  of.  Rebecca  and  her 
daughters  were  heard  of  no  more.  They  had  made  out  their 
case,  and  done  in  their  wild  mumming  way  something  of  a 
good  work.  Only  a  short  time  before  the  rioters  would 
have  been  shot  down,  and  the  grievances  would  have  been 
allowed  to  stand.  Rebecca  and  her  short  career  mark  an 
advancement  in  the  political  and  social  history  of  England. 

Sir  James  Graham,  the  Home-secretary,  brought  himself 
and  the  Government  into  some  trouble  by  the  manner  in 
which  he  made  use  of  the  power  invested  in  the  Administra- 
tion for  the  opening  of  private  letters.  Mr.  Duncombe,  the 
Radical  member  for  Finsbury,  presented  a  petition  from  Jo- 
seph Mazzini  and  others  complaining  that  letters  addressed 
to  them  had  been  opened  in  the  Post-office.  Many  of  Maz- 
zini's  friends,  and  perhaps  Mazzini  himself,  believed  that  the 
contents  of  these  letters  had  been  communicated  to  the  Sar- 
dinian and  Austrian  Governments,  and  that,  as  a  result,  men 
who  were  supposed  to  be  implicated  in  projects  of  insurrec- 
tion on  the  Continent  had  actually  been  arrested  and  put  to 
death.  Sir  James  Graham  did  not  deny  that  he  had  issued 
a  warrant  authorizing  the  opening  of  some  of  Mazzini's  let- 
ters; but  he  contended  that  the  right  to  open  letters  had 
been  specially  reserved  to  the  Government  on  its  responsi- 
bility, that  it  had  been  always  exercised,  but  by  him  with 
special  caution  and  moderation ;  and  that  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  any  Government  absolutely  to  deprive  itself  of 
such  a  right.  The  public  excitement  was  at  first  very  great ; 
but  it  soon  subsided.  The  reports  of  Parliamentary  commit- 
tees appointed  by  the  two  Houses  showed  that  all  Govern- 
ments had  exercised  the  right,  but  naturally  with  decreasing 
frequency  and  greater  caution  of  late  years ;  and  that  there 
was  no  chance  now  of  its  being  seriously  abused.  No  one, 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION.  211 

not  even  Thomas  Cavlyle,  who  had  written  to  the  Times  in 
generous  indignation  at  the  opening  of  Mazzini's  letters, 
went  so  far  as  to  say  that  such  a  right  should  never  be  ex- 
ercised. Carlyle  admitted  that  he  would  tolerate  the  prac- 
tice "  when  some  new  Gunpowder  Plot  may  be  in  the  wind, 
some  double-dyed  high-treason  or  imminent  national  wreck 
not  avoidable  otherwise."  In  the  particular  case  of  Mazzini 
it  seemed  an  odious  trick,  and  every  one  was  ashamed  of  it. 
Such  a  feeling  was  the  surest  guard  against  abuse  for  the 
future,  and  the  matter  was  .allowed  to  drop.  The  minister 
is  to  be  pitied  who  is  compelled  even  by  legitimate  necessi- 
ty to  have  recourse  to  such  an  expedient;  he  would  be  de- 
spised now  by  every  decent  man  if  he  turned  to  it  without 
such  justification.  Many  years  had  to  pass  away  before  Sir 
James  Graham  was  free  from  innuendoes  and  attacks  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  tampered  with  the  correspondence  of  an 
exile.  One  remark,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  right  to  make. 
An  exile  is  sheltered  in  a  country  like  England,  on  the  as- 
sumption that  he  does  not  involve  her  in  responsibility  and 
danger  by  using  her  protection  as  a  shield  behind  which 
to  contrive  plots  and  organize  insurrections  against  foreign 
Governments.  It  is  certain  that  Mazzini  did  make  use  of 
the  shelter  England  gave  him  for  such  a  purpose.  It  would 
in  the  end  be  to  the  heavy  injury  of  all  fugitives  from  des- 
potic rule  if  to  shelter  them  brought  such  consequences  on 
the  countries  that  offered  them  a  home. 

The  Peel  Administration  was  made  memorable  by  many 
remarkable  events  at  home  as  well  as  abroad.  It  had,  as  we 
have  seen,  inherited  wars  and  brought  them  to  a  close :  it 
had  wars  of  its  own.  Scinde  was  annexed  by  Lord  Ellen- 
borough  in  consequence  of  the  disputes  which  had  arisen  be- 
tween us  and  the  Ameers,  whom  we  accused  of  having  bro- 
ken faith  with  us.  They  were  said  to  be  in  correspondence 
with  our  enemies,  which  may  possibly  have  been  true,  and 
to  have  failed  to  pay  up  our  tribute,  which  was  very  likely. 
Anyhow  we  found  occasion  for  an  attack  on  Scinde;  and 
the  result  was  the  total  defeat  of  the  Princes  and  their  army, 
and  the  annexation  of  the  territory.  Sir  Charles  Napier  won 
a  splendid  victory — splendid,  that  is,  in  a  military  sense — 
over  an  enemy  outnumbering  him  by  more  than  twelve  to 
one  at  the  battle  of  Meeanee ;  and  Scinde  was  ours.  Peel 


212  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

and  his  colleagues  accepted  the  annexation.  None  of  them 
liked  it ;  but  none  saw  how  it  could  be  undone.  There  was 
nothing  to  be  proud  of  in  the  matter,  except  the  courage  of 
our  soldiers,  and  the  genius  of  Sir  Charles  Napier,  one  of  the 
most  brilliant,  daring,  successful,  eccentric,  and  self-conceited 
captains  who  had  ever  fought  in  the  service  of  England  since 
the  days  of  Peterborough.  Later  on,  the  Sikhs  invaded  our 
territory  by  crossing  the  Sutlej  in  great  force.  Sir  Hugh 
Gouflrh,  afterward  Lord  Gough,  fought  several  fierce  battles 

O       7  O       7  O 

with  them  before  he  could  conquer  them;  and  even  then 
they  were  only  conquered  for  the  time. 

We  were  at  one  moment  apparently  on  the  very  verge  of 
what  must  have  proved  a  far  more  serious  war  much  nearer 
home,  in  consequence  of  the  dispute  that  arose  between  this 
country  and  France  about  Tahiti  and  Queen  Pomare.  Queen 
Pomare  was  sovereign  of  the  island  of  Tahiti,  in  the  South 
Pacific,  the  Otaheite  of  Captain  Cook.  She  was  a  pupil  of 
some  of  our  missionaries,  and  was  very  friendly  to  England 
and  its  people.  She  had  been  induced  or  compelled  to  put 
herself  and  her  dominion  under  the  protection  of  France;  a 
step  which  was  highly  displeasing  to  her  subjects.  Some 
ill-feeling  toward  the  French  residents  of  the  island  was 
shown;  and  the  French  admiral,  who  had  induced  or  com- 
pelled the  Queen  to  put  herself  under  French  protection, 
now  suddenly  appeared  off  the  coast,  and  called  on  her  to 
hoist  the  French  flag  above  her  own.  She  refused ;  and  he 
instantly  effected  a  landing  on  the  island,  pulled  down  her 
flag,  raised  that  of  France  in  its  place,  and  proclaimed  that 
the  island  was  French  territory.  The  French  admiral  ap- 
pears to  have  been  a  hot-headed,  thoughtless  sort  of  man, 
the  Commodore  Wilkes  of  his  day.  His  act  was  at  once 
disavowed  by  the  French  Government,  and  condemned  in 
strong  terms  by  M.  Guizot.  Buj;  Queen  Pomare  had  ap- 
pealed to  the  Queen  of  England  for  assistance.  "Do  not 
cast  me  away,  my  friend,"  she  said ;  "  I  run  to  you  for  ref- 
uge, to  be  covered  under  your  great  shadow,  the  same  that 
afforded  relief  to  my  fathers  by  your  fathers,  who  are  now 
dead,  and  whose  kingdoms  have  descended  to  us,  the  weaker 
vessels."  A  large  party  in  France  allowed  themselves  to 
become  inflamed  with  the  idea  that  British  intrigue  was  at 
the  bottom  of  the  Tahiti  people's  dislike  to  the  protectorate 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION.  213 

of  France,  and  that  England  wanted  to  get  Queen  Pomave's 
dominions  for  herself.  They  cried  out,  therefore,  that  to  take 
down  the  flag  of  France  from  its  place  in  Tahiti  would  be 
to  insult  the  dignity  of  the  French  nation,  and  to  insult  it  at 
the  instance  of  England.  The  cry  was  echoed  in  the  shrill- 
est tones  by  a  great  number  of  French  newspapers.  Where 
the  flag  of  France  has  once  been  hoisted,  they  screamed,  it 
must  never  be  taken  down ;  which  is  about  equivalent  to 
saying  that  if  a  man's  officious  servant  carries  off  the  prop- 
erty of  some  one  else,  and  gives  it  to  his  master,  the  mas- 
ter's dignity  is  lowered  by  his  consenting  to  hand  it  back  to 
its  owner.  In  the  face  of  this  clamor  the  French  Govern- 
ment, although  they  disavowed  any  share  in  the  filibuster- 
ing of  their  admiral,  did  not  show  themselves  in  great  haste 
to  undo  what  he  had  done.  Possibly  they  found  themselves 
in  something  of  the  same  difficulty  as  the  English  Govern- 
ment in  regard  to  the  annexation  of  Scinde.  They  could 
not,  perhaps,  with  great  safety  to  themselves  have  ventured 
to  be  honest  all  at  once ;  and  in  any  case  they  did  not  want 
to  give  up  the  protectorate  of  Tahiti.  While  the  more  hot- 
headed on  both  sides  of  the  English  Channel  were  thus  snarl- 
ing at  each  other,  the  difficulty  was  immensely  complicated 
by  the  seizure  of  a  missionary  named  Pritchard,  who  had 
been  our  consul  in  the  island  up  to  the  deposition  of  Po- 
mare.  A  French  sentinel  had  been  attacked,  or  was  said 
to  have  been  attacked,  in  the  night,  and  in  consequence  the 
French  commandant  seized  Pritchard  in  reprisal,  declaring 
him  to  be  "the  only  mover  and  instigator  of  disturbances 
among  the  natives."  Pritchard  was  flung  into  prison,  and 
only  released  to  be  expelled  from  the  island.  He  came  home 
to  England  with  his  story ;  and  his  arrival  was  the  signal 
for  an  outburst  of  indignation  all  over  the  country.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  and  Lord  Aberdeen  alike  stigmatized  the  treat- 
ment of  Pritchard  as  a  gross  and  intolerable  outrage ;  and 
satisfaction  was  demanded  of  the  French  Government.  The 
King  and  M.  Guizot  were  both  willing  that  full  justice  should 
be  done,  and  both  anxious  to  avoid  any  occasion  of  ill-feel- 
ing with  England.  The  King  had  lately  been  receiving,  with 
effusive  show  of  affection,  a  visit  from  our  Queen  in  France, 
and  was  about  to  return  it.  But  so  hot  was  popular  passion 
on  both  sides,  that  it  would  have  needed  stronger  and  juster 


214  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

natures  than  those  of  the  King  and  his  minister  to  venture 
at  once  on  doing  the  right  thing.  It  was  on  the  last  day  of 
the  session  of  1844,  September  5th,  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  was 
able  to  announce  that  the  French  Government  had  agreed 
to  compensate  Pritchard  for  his  sufferings  and  losses.  Queen 
Pomare  was  nominally  restored  to  power,  but  the  French 
protection  proved  as  stringent  as  if  it  were  a  sovereign  rule. 
She  might  as  well  have  pulled  down  her  flag,  for  all  the  sov- 
ereign right  it  secured  to  her.  She  died  thirty-four  years 
after,  and  her  death  recalled  to  the  memory  of  the  English 
public  the  long-forgotten  fact  that  she  had  once  so  nearly 
been  the  cause  of  a  war  between  England  and  France. 

The  Ashburton  Treaty  and  the  Oregon  Treaty  belong 
alike  to  the  history  of  Peel's  Administration.  The  Ashbur- 
ton Treaty  bears  date  August  9th,  1842,  and  arranges  finally 
the  north-western  boundary  between  the  British  Provinces 
of  North  America  and  the  United  States.  For  many  years 
the  want  of  any  clear  and  settled  understanding  as  to  the 
boundary  line  between  Canada  and  the  State  of  Maine  had 
been  a  source  of  some  disturbance  and  of  much  controversy. 
Arbitration  between  England  and  the  United  States  had 
been  tried  and  failed,  both  parties  declining  the  award.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  sent  out  Lord  Ashburton,  formerly  Mr.  Baring, 
as  plenipotentiary,  to  Washington,  in  1842,  and  by  his  intel- 
ligent exertions  an  arrangement  was  come  to  which  appears 
to  have  given  mutual  satisfaction  ever  since,  despite  of  the 
sinister  prophesyings  of  Lord  Palraerston  at  the  time.  The 
Oregon  question  was  more  complicated,  and  was  the  source 
of  a  longer  controversy.  More  than  once  the  dispute  about 
the  boundary  line  in  the  Oregon  region  had  very  nearly  be- 
come an  occasion  for  war  between  England  and  the  United 
States.  In  Canning's  time  there  was  a  crisis  during  which, 
to  quote  the  words  of  an  English  statesman,  war  could  have 
been  brought  about  by  the  holding  up  of  a  finger.  The 
question  in  dispute  was  as  to  the  boundary  line  between 
English  and  American  territory  west  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. It  had  seemed  a  matter  of  little  importance  at  one 
time,  when  the  country  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was 
regarded  by  most  persons  as  little  better  than  a  desert  idle. 
But  when  the  vast  capacities  and  the  splendid  future  of  the 
Pacific  slope  began  to  be  recognized,  and  the  importance  to 


PEEL'S  ADMINISTRATION.  215 

us  of  some  station  and  harbor  there  came  to  be  more  and 
more  evident,  the  dispute  naturally  swelled  into  a  question 
of  vital  interest  to  both  nations.  In  1818  an  attempt  at 
arrangement  was  made,  but  failed.  The  two  Governments 
then  agreed  to  leave  the  disputed  regions  to  joint  occupa- 
tion for  ten  years,  after  which  the  subject  was  to  be  opened 
again.  When  the  end  of  the  first  term  came  near,  Canning 
did  his  best  to  bring  about  a  settlement,  but  failed.  The 
dispute  involved  the  ownership  of  the  mouth  of  the  Colum- 
bia River,  and  of  the  noble  island  which  bears  the  name  of 
Vancouver,  off  the  shore  of  British  Columbia.  The  joint  oc- 
cupancy was  renewed  for  an  indefinite  time;  but  in  1843 
the  President  of  the  United  States  somewhat  peremptorily 
called  for  a  final  settlement  of  the  boundary.  The  question 
was  eagerly  taken  up  by  excitable  politicians  in  the  Ameri- 
can House  of  Representatives.  For  more  than  two  years 
the  Oregon  question  became  a  party  cry  in  America.  With 
a  large  proportion  of  the  American  public,  including,  of 
course,  nearly  all  citizens  of  Irish  birth  or  extraction,  any 
President  would  have  been  popular  beyond  measure  who 
had  forced  a  war  on  England.  Calmer  and  wiser  counsels 
prevailed,  however,  on  both  sides.  Lord  Aberdeen,  our  For- 
eign Secretary,  was  especially  moderate  and  conciliatory. 
He  offered  a  compromise  which  was  at  last  accepted.  On 
June  15th,  1846,  the  Oregon  Treaty  settled  the  question  for 
that  time  at  least ;  the  dividing  line  was  to  be  "  the  forty- 
ninth  degree  of  latitude,  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  west 
to  the  middle  of  the  channel  separating  Vancouver's  Island 
from  the  main-land;  thence  southerly  through  the  middle 
of  the  channel  and  of  Fuca's  Straits  to  the  Pacific."  The 
channel  and  straits  were  to  be  free,  as  also  the  great  north- 
ern branch  of  the  Columbia  River.  In  other  words,  Van- 
couver's Island  remained  to  Great  Britain,  and  the  free  navi- 
gation of  the  Columbia  River  was  secured.  We  have  said 
that  the  question  was  settled,  "for  that  time;"  because  an 
important  part  of  it  came  up  again  for  settlement  many 
years  after.  The  commissioners  appointed  to  determine  that 
portion  of  the  boundary  which  was  to  run  southerly  through 
the  middle  of  the  channel  were  unable  to  come  to  any  agree- 
ment on  the  subject,  and  the  divergence  of  the  claims  made 
on  one  side  and  the  other  constituted  a  new  question,  which 


216  A   HISTORY   OF   OUE   OWN  TIMES. 

became  a  part  of  the  famous  Treaty  of  Washington  in  1871, 
and  was  finally  settled  by  the  arbitration  of  the  Emperor  of 
Germany.  But  it  is  much  to  the  honor  of  the  Peel  Admin- 
istration that  a  dispute  which  had  for  years  been  charged 
with  possibilities  of  war,  and  had  become  a  stock  subject  of 
political  agitation  in  America,  should  have  been  so  far  set- 
tled as  to  be  removed  forever  after  out  of  the  category  of 
disputes  which  suggest  an  appeal  to  arms.  This  was  one 
of  the  last  acts  of  Peel's  Government,  and  it  was  not  the 
least  of  the  great  things  he  had  done.  We  have  soon  to  tell 
how  it  came  about  that  it  was  one  of  his  latest  triumphs, 
and  how  an  Administration  which  had  come  into  power  with 
such  splendid  promise,  and  had  accomplished  so  much  in  such 
various  fields  of  legislation,  was  brought  so  suddenly  to  a 
fall.  The  story  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  and  important 
chapters  in  the  history  of  English  politics  and  parties. 

During  Peel's  time  we  catch  a  last  glimpse  of  the  famous 
Arctic  navigator,  Sir  John  Franklin.  He  sailed  on  the  ex- 
pedition which  was  doomed  to  be  his  last,  on  May  26th, 
1845,  with  his  two  vessels,  Erebus  and  Terror.  Not  much 
more  is  heard  of  him  as  among  the  living.  We  may  say  of 
him  as  Carlyle  says  of  La  Perouse, "  The  brave  navigator 
goes  and  returns  not;  the  seekers  search  far  seas  for  him  in 
vain ;  only  some  mournful,  mysterious  shadow  of  him  hovers 
long  in  all  heads  and  hearts." 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

FKEE-TRADE   AND   THE    LEAGUE. 

FEW  chapters  of  political  history  in  modern  times  have 
given  occasion  for  more  controversy  than  that  which  con- 
tains the  story  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  Administration  in  ita 
dealing  with  the  Corn-laws.  Told  in  the  briefest  form,  the 
story  is  that  Peel  came  into  office  in  1841  to  maintain  the 
Corn-laws,  and  that  in  1846  he  repealed  them.  The  contro- 
versy as  to  the  wisdom  or  unwisdom  of  repealing  the  Corn- 
laws  has  long  since  come  to  an  end.  They  who  were  the 
uncompromising  opponents  of  Free-trade  at  that  time  are 
proud  to  call  themselves  its  uncompromising  zealots  now. 


FKEE-TKADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         217 

Indeed,  there  is  no  more  chance  of  a  reaction  against  Free- 
trade  in  England  than  there  is  of  a  reaction  against  the  rule 
of  three.  But  the  controversy  still  exists,  and  will  probably 
always  be  in  dispute,  as  to  the  conduct  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

The  Melbourne  Ministry  fell,  as  we  have  seen,  in  conse- 
quence of  a  direct  vote  of  want  of  confidence  moved  by 
their  leading  opponent,  and  the  return  of  a  majority  hostile 
to  them  at  the  general  election  that  followed.  The  vote  of 
want  of  confidence  was  levelled  against  their  financial  poli- 
cy, especially  against  Lord  John  Russell's  proposal  to  sub- 
stitute a  fixed  duty  of  eight  shillings  for  Peel's  sliding  scale. 
Sir  Robert  Peel  came  into  office,  and  he  introduced  a  reor- 
ganized scheme  of  a  sliding  scale,  reducing  the  duties  and 
improving  the  system,  but  maintaining  the  principle.  Lord 
John  Russell  proposed  an  amendment  declaring  that  the 
House  of  Commons,  "  considering  the  evils  which  have  been 
caused  by  the  present  Corn -laws,  and  especially  by  the 
fluctuation  of  the  graduated  or  sliding  scale,  is  not  prepared 
to  adopt  the  measure  of  her  Majesty's  Government,  which  is 
founded  on  the  same  principles,  and  is  likely  to  be  attended 
by  similar  results."  The  amendment  was  rejected  by  a  large 
majority,  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  twenty-three.  But 
the  question  between  Free-trade  and  Protection  was  even 
more  distinctly  raised.  Mr.  Villiers  proposed  another  amend- 
ment declaring  for  the  entire  abolition  of  all  duties  on  grain. 
Only  ninety  votes  were  given  for  the  amendment,  while  three 
hundred  and  ninety- three  were  recorded  against  it.  Sir 
Robert  Peel's  Government,  therefore,  came  into  power  dis- 
tinctly pledged  to  uphold  the  principle  of  protection  for 
home-grown  grain.  Four  years  after  this  Sir  Robert  Peel 
proposed  the  total  abolition  of  the  corn  duties.  For  this  he 
was  denounced  by  some  members  of  his  party  in  language 
more  fierce  and  unmeasured  than  ever  since  has  been  applied 
to  any  leading  statesman.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  never  assailed 
by  the  stanchest  supporter  of  the  Irish  Church  in  words  so 
vituperative  as  those  which  rated  Sir  Robert  Peel  for  his 
supposed  apostasy.  One  eminent  person,  at  least,  made  his 
first  fame  as  a  Parliamentary  orator  by  his  denunciations  of 
the  great  minister  whom  he  had  previously  eulogized  and 
supported. 

"The  history  of  agricultural  distress,"  it  has  been  well 

I.— 10 


218  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

observed,  "  is  the  history  of  agricultural  abundance."  This 
looks  at  first  sight  a  paradox;  but  nothing  can  in  reality  be 
more  plain  and  less  paradoxical.  "  Whenever,"  to  follow 
out  the  passage,  "Providence,  through  the  blessing  of  genial 
seasons,  fills  the  nation's  stores  with  plenteousness,  then,  and 
then  only,  has  the  cry  of  ruin  to  the  cultivator  been  pro- 
claimed as  the  one  great  evil  for  legislation  to  repress." 
This  is,  indeed,  the  very  meaning  of  the  principle  of  protec- 
tion. When  the  commodity  which  the  protected  interest 
has  to  dispose  of  is  so  abundant  as  to  be  easily  attained  by 
the  common  body  of  consumers,  then,  of  course,  the  protect- 
ed interest  is  injured  in  its  particular  way  of  making  money, 
and  expects  the  State  to  do  something  to  seciu*e  it  in  the 
principal  advantage  of  its  monopoly.  The  greater  quantity 
of  grain  a  good  harvest  brings  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  peo- 
ple, the  less  the  price  the  corn-grower  can  charge  for  it.  His 
interest  as  a  monopolist  is  always  and  inevitably  opposed  to 
the  interest  of  the  community. 

But  it  is  easy  even  now,  when  we  have  almost  forgotten 
the  days  of  protection,  to  see  that  the  corn-grower  is  not 
likely  either  to  recognize  or  to  admit  this  conflict  of  inter- 
ests between  his  protection  and  the  public  welfare.  Apart 
from  the  natural  tendency  of  every  man  to  think  that  that 
which  does  him  good  must  do  good  to  the  community,  there 
was,  undoubtedly,  something  very  fascinating  in  the  theory 
of  protection.  It  had  a  charming  give  and  take,  live  and  let 
live,  air  about  it.  "You  give  me  a  little  more  than  the 
market  price  for  ray  corn,  and  don't  you  see  I  shall  be  able 
to  buy  all  the  more  of  your  cloth  and  tea  and  sugar,  or  to 
pay  you  the  higher  rent  for  your  land?"  Such  a  compact 
seems  reasonable  and  tempting.  Almost  up  to  our  own  time 
the  legislation  of  the  country  was  in  the  hands  of  the  classes 
who  had  more  to  do  with  the  growing  of  corn  and  the  own- 
ership of  land  than  with  the  making  of  cotton  and  the  work- 
ing of  machinery.  The  great  object  of  legislation  and  of 
social  compacts  of  whatever  kind  seemed  to  be  to  keep  the 
rents  of  the  land-owners  and  the  prices  of  the  farmers  up  to 
a  comfortable  standard.  It  is  not  particularly  to  the  dis- 
credit of  the  landlords  and  the  farmers  that  this  was  so. 
We  have  seen,  in  later  times,  how  every  class  in  succession 
lias  resisted  the  movement  of  the  principle  of  Free -trade 


FKEE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         219 

when  it  came  to  be  applied  to  its  own  particular  interests. 
The  paper  manufacturers  liked  it  as  little  in  1860,  as  the 
landlords  and  farmers  had  done  fifteen  years  earlier.  When 
the  cup  comes  to  be  commended  to  the  lips  of  each  interest 
in  turn,  we  always  find  that  it  is  received  as  a  poisoned  chal- 
ice, and  taken  with  much  shuddering  and  passionate  protes- 
tation. The  particular  advantage  possessed  by  vested  inter- 
ests in  the  Corn-laws  was  that  for  a  long  time  the  landlords 
possessed  all  the  legislative  power  and  all  the  prestige  as 
well.  There  was  a  certain  reverence  and  sanctity  about  the 
ownership  of  land,  with  its  hereditary  descent  and  its  patri- 
archal dignities,  which  the  manufacture  of  paper  could  not 
pretend  to  claim. 

If  it  really  were  true  that  the  legitimate  incomes  or  the 
legitimate  influence  of  the  landlord  class  in  England  went 
down  in  any  way  because  of  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws, 
it  would  have  to  be  admitted  that  the  landlords,  like  the 
aristocrats  before  the  French  Revolution,  had  done  some- 
thing themselves  to  encourage  the  growth  of  new  and  dis- 
turbing ideas.  Before  the  Revolution,  free  thought  and  the 
equality  and  brotherhood  of  man  were  beginning  to  be  pet 
doctrines  among  the  French  nobles  and  among  their  wives 
and  daughters.  It  was  the  whim  of  the  hour  to  talk  Rous- 
seau, and  to  affect  indifference  to  rank,  and  a  general  faith 
in  a  good  time  coming  of  equality  and  brotherhood.  In 
something  of  the  same  fashion  the  aristocracy  of  England 
were  for  some  time  before  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws  il- 
lustrating a  sort  of  revival  of  patriarchal  ideas  about  the 
duties  of  property.  The  influence  was  stirring  everywhere. 
Oxford  was  beginning  to  busy  itself  in  the  revival  of  the 
olden  influence  of  the  Church.  The  Young  England  party, 
as  they  were  then  called,  were  ardent  to  restore  the  good 
old  days  when  the  noble  was  the  father  of  the  poor  and  the 
chief  of  his  neighborhood.  All  manner  of  pretty  whimsies 
were  caught  up  with  this  ruling  idea  to  give  them  an  ap- 
pearance of  earnest  purpose.  The  young  landlord  exhibited 
himself  in  the  attitude  of  a  protector,  patron,  and  friend  to 
all  his  tenants.  Doles  were  formally  given  at  stated  hours 
to  all  who  would  come  for  them  to  the  castle  gate.  Young 
noblemen  played  cricket  with  the  peasants  on  their  estate, 
and  the  Saturnian  Age  was  believed  by  a  good  many  per- 


220  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

sons  to  be  returning  for  the  express  benefit  of  Old,  or  rather 
of  Young,  England.  There  was  something  like  a  party  being 
formed  in  Parliament  for  the  realization  of  Young  England's 
idyllic  purposes.  It  comprised  among  its  numbers  several 
more  or  less  gifted  youths  of  rank,  who  were  full  of  enthusi- 
asm and  poetic  aspirations  and  nonsense ;  and  it  had  the  en- 
couragement and  support  of  one  man  of  genius,  who  had  no 
natural  connection  with  the  English  aristocracy,  but  who  was 
afterward  destined  to  be  the  successful  leader  of  the  Con- 
servative and  aristocratic  party ;  to  be  its  savior  when  it 
was  all  but  down  in  the  dust ;  to  'guide  it  to  victory,  and 
make  it  once  more,  for  the  time  at  least,  supreme  in  the  po- 
litical life  of  the  country.  This  brilliant  champion  of  Con- 
servatism has  often  spoken  of  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws 
as  the  fall  of  the  landlord  class  in  England.  If  the  land- 
"  lords  fell,  it  must  be  said  of  them,  as  has  been  fairly  said  of 
many  a  dynasty,  that  they  never  deserved  better,  on  the 
whole,  than  just  at  the  time  when  the  blow  struck  them 
down. 

The  famous  Corn -law  of  1815  was  a  copy  of  the  Corn- 
law  of  1670.  The  former  measure  imposed  a  duty  on  the 
importation  of  foreign  grain  which  amounted  to  prohibition. 
Wheat  might  be  exported  upon  the  payment  of  one  shilling 
per  quarter  customs  duty;  but  importation  was  practically 
prohibited  until  the  price  of  wheat  had  reached  eighty  shil- 
lings a  quarter.  The  Corn-law  of  1815  was  hurried  through 
Parliament,  absolutely  closing  the  ports  against  the  impor- 
tation of  foreign  grain  until  the  price  of  our  home- grown 
grain  had  reached  the  magic  figure  of  .eighty  shillings  a 
quarter.  It  was  hurried  through,  despite  the  most  earnest 
petitions  from  the  commercial  and  manufacturing  classes. 
A  great  deal  of  popular  disturbance  attended  the  passing  of 
the  measure.  There  were  riots  in  London,  and  the  houses 
of  several  of  the  supporters  of  the  bill  were  attacked.  In- 
cendiary fires  blazed  in  many  parts  of  the  country.  In  the 
Isle  of  Ely  there  were  riots  which  lasted  for  two  days  and 
two  nights,  and  the  aid  of  the  military  had  to  be  called  in 
to  suppress  them.  Five  persons  were  hanged  as  the  result 
of  these  disturbances.  One  might  excuse  a  demagogue  who 
compared  the  event  to  the  suppression  of  some  of  the  food 
riots  in  France  just  before  the  Revolution,  of  which  we  only 


FREE-TRADE   AND  THE   LEAGUE.  221 

read  that  the  people — the  poor,  that  is  to  say — turned  out  de- 
manding bread,  and  the  ringleaders  were  immediately  hang- 
ed, and  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter.  After  the  Corn- 
law  of  1815,  thus  ominously  introduced,  there  were  Sliding- 
scale  Acts,  having  for  their  business  to  establish  a  varying 
system  of  duty,  so  that,  according  as  the  price  of  home- 
produced  wheat  rose  to  a  certain  height,  the  duty  on  im- 
ported wheat  sank  in  proportion.  The  principle  of  all  these 
measures  was  the  same.  It  was  founded  on  the  assumption 
that  the  corn  grew  for  the  benefit  of  the  grower  first  of  all; 
and  that  until  he  had  been  secured  in  a  handsome  profit 
the  public  at  large  had  no  right  to  any  reduction  in  the  cost 
of  food.  When  the  harvest  was  a  good  one,  and  the  golden 
grain  was  plenty,  then  the  soul  of  the  grower  was  afraid, 
and  he  called  out  to  Parliament  to  protect  him  against  the 
calamity  of  having  to  sell  his  corn  any  cheaper  than  in  years 
of  famine.  He  did  not  see  all  the  time  that  if  the  prosperi- 
ty of  the  country  in  general  was  enhanced,  he  too  must  come 
to  benefit  by  it. 

Naturally  it  was  in  places  like  Manchester  that  the  falla- 
cy of  all  this  theory  was  first  commonly  perceived  and  most 
warmly  resented.  The  Manchester  manufacturers  saw  that 
the  customers  for  their  goods  were  to  be  found  in  all  parts 
of  the  world ;  and  they  knew  that  at  every  turn  they  were 
hampered  in  their  dealings  with  the  customers  by  the  sys- 
tem of  protective  duties.  They  wanted  to  sell  their  goods 
wherever  they  could  find  buyers,  and  they  chafed  at  any 
barrier  between  them  and  the  sale.  Manchester,  from  the 
time  of  its  first  having  Parliamentary  representation — only 
a  few  years  before  the  foundation  of  the  Anti- Corn -law 
League — had  always  spoken  out  for  Free-trade.  The  fasci- 
nating sophism  which  had  such  charms  for  other  communi- 
ties, that  by  paying  more  than  was  actually  necessary  for 
everything  all  round,  Dick  enriched  Tom,  while  Tom  was  at 
the  same  time  enriching  Dick,  had  no  charms  for  the  intel- 
ligence and  the  practical  experience  of  Manchester.  The 
close  of  the  year  1836  was  a  period  of  stagnant  trade  and 
general  depression,  arising,  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  to 
actual  and  severe  suffering.  Some  members  of  Parliament 
and  other  influential  men  were  stricken  with  the  idea,  which 
it  does  not  seem  to  have  required  much  strength  of  observa- 


222  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tion  to  foster,  that  it  could  not  be  for  the  advantage  of  the 
country  in  general  to  have  the  price  of  bread  very  high  at  a 
time  when  wages  were  very  low  and  work  was  scarce.  A 
movement  against  the  Corn -laws  began  in  London.  An 
Anti-Corn-law  Association  on  a  small  scale  was  formed. 
Its  list  of  members  bore  the  names  of  more  than  twenty 
members  of  Parliament,  and  for  a  time  the  society  had  a 
look  of  vigor  about  it.  It  came  to  nothing,  however.  Lon- 
don has  never  been  found  an  effective  nursery  of  agitation. 
It  is  too  large  to  have  any  central  interest  or  source  of  ac- 
tion. It  is  too  dependent,  socially  and  economically,  on  the 
patronage  of  the  higher  and  wealthier  classes.  London  has 
never  been  to  England  what  Paris  has  been  to  France.  It 
has  hardly  ever  made  or  represented  thoroughly  the  public 
opinion  of  England  during  any  great  crisis.  A  new  centre 
of  operations  soon  had  to  be  sought,  and  various  causes  com- 
bined to  make  Lancashire  the  proper  place.  In  the  year 
1838  the  town  of  Bolton-le- Moors,  in  Lancashire,  was  the 
victim  of  a  terrible  commercial  crisis.  Thirty  out  of  the 
fifty  manufacturing  establishments  which  the  town  contain- 
ed were  closed;  nearly  a  fourth  of  all  the  houses  of  business 
were  closed  and  actually  deserted ;  and  more  than  five  thou- 
sand workmen  were  without  homes  or  means  of  subsistence. 
All  the  intelligence  and  energy  of  Lancashire  was  roused. 
One  obvious  guarantee  against  starvation  was  cheap  bread, 
and  cheap  bread  meant,  of  course,  the  abolition  of  the  Corn- 
laws,  for  these  laws  were  constructed  on  the  principle  that 
it  was  necessary  to  keep  bread  dear.  A  meeting  was  held 
in  Manchester  to  consider  measures  necessary  to  be  adopted 
for  bringing  about  the  complete  repeal  of  these  laws.  The 
Manchester  Chamber  of  Commerce  adopted  a  petition  to 
Parliament  against  the  Corn-laws.  The  Anti-Corn-law  asri- 

o  o 

tation  had  been  fairly  launched. 

From  that  time   it  grew,  and  grew  in   importance   and 
strength.     Meetings  were  held  in  various  towns  of  England 

fj  &  o 

and  Scotland.  Associations  were  formed  everywhere  to  co- 
operate with  the  movement,  which  had  its  head-quarters  in 
Manchester.  In  Newall's  Buildings,  Market  Street,  Man- 
chester, the  work  of  the  League  was  really  done  for  years. 
The  leaders  of  the  movement  gave  up  their  time  day  by 
day  to  its  service.  The  League  had  to  encounter  a  great 


FREE-TRADE   AND   THE   LEAGUE.  223 

deal  of  rather  fierce  opposition  from  the  Chartists,  who  loud- 
ly proclaimed  that  the  whole  movement  was  only  meant  to 
entrap  them  once  more  into  an  alliance  with  the  middle 
classes  and  the  employers,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Reform  Bill, 
in  order  that  when  they  had  been  made  the  cat's-paw  again 
they  might  again  be  thrown  contemptuously  aside.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  League  had  from  the  first  the  cordial  co-op- 
eration of  Daniel  O'Connell,  who  became  one  of  their  prin- 
cipal orators  when  they  held  meetings  in  the  metropolis. 
They  issued  pamphlets  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  and  sent 
lecturers  all  over  the  country  explaining  the  principles  of 
Free-trade.  A  gigantic  propaganda  of  Free-trade  opinions 
was  called  into  existence.  Money  was  raised  by  the  hold- 
ing of  bazars  in  Manchester  and  in  London,  and  by  calling 
for  subscriptions.  A  bazar  in  Manchester  brought  in  ten 
thousand  pounds  ;  one  in  London  raised  rather  more  than 
double  that  sum,  not  including  the  subscriptions  that  were 
contributed.  A  Free- trade  Hall  was  built  in  Manchester. 
This  building  had  an  interesting  history  full  of  good  omen 
for  the  cause.  The  ground  on  which  the  hall  was  erected 
was  the  property  of  Mr.  Cobden,  and  was  placed  by  him  at 
the  disposal  of  the  League.  That  ground  was  the  scene  of 
what  was  known  in  Manchester  as  the  Massacre  of  Peterloo. 
On  August  16th,  1819,  a  meeting  of  Manchester  Reformers 
was  held  on  that  spot,  which  was  dispersed  by  an  attack  of 
soldiers  and  militia,  with  the  loss  of  many  lives.  The  mem- 
ory of  that  day  rankled  in  the  hearts  of  the  Manchester  Lib- 
erals for  long  after,  and  perhaps  no  better  means  could  be 
found  for  purifying  the  ground  from  the  stain  and  the  shame 
of  such  bloodshed  than  its  dedication  by  the  modern  apos- 
tle of  peace  and  Free-trade  as  a  site  whereon  to  build  a  hall 
sacred  to  the  promulgation  of  his  favorite  doctrines. 

The  times  were  peculiarly  favorable  to  the  new  sort  of 
propaganda  which  came  into  being  with  the  Anti-Corn-law 
League.  A  few  years  before  such  an  agitation  would  hardly 
have  found  the  means  of  making  its  influence  felt  all  over  the 
country.  The  very  reduction  of  the  cost  of  postage  alone 
must  have  facilitated  its  labors  to  an  extent  beyond  calcula- 
tion. The  inundation  of  the  country  with  pamphlets,  tracts, 
and  reports  of  speeches  would  have  been  scarcely  possible 
under  the  old  system,  and  would  in  any  case  have  swallow- 


224  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ed  up  a  far  larger  amount  of  money  than  even  the  League 
with  its  ample  resources  would  have  been  able  to  supply. 
In  all  parts  of  the  country  railways  were  being  opened,  and 
these  enabled  the  lecturers  of  the  League  to  hasten  from 
town  to  town  and  to  keep  the  cause  always  alive  in  the  pop- 
ular mind.  All  these  advantages  and  many  others  might, 
however,  have  proved  of  little  avail  if  the  League  had  not 
from  the  first  been  in  the  hands  of  men  who  seemed  as  if 
they  came  by  special  appointment  to  do  its  work.  Great 
as  the  work  was  which  the  League  did,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered in  England  almost  as  much  because  of  the  men  who 
won  the  success  as  on  account  of  the  success  itself. 

The  nominal  leader  of  the  Free-trade  party  in  Parliament 
was  for  many  years  Mr.  Charles  Villiers,  a  man  of  aristo- 
cratic family  and  surroundings,  of  remarkable  ability,  and  of 
the  steadiest  fidelity  to  the  cause  he  had  undertaken.  Noth- 
ing is  a  more  familiar  phenomenon  in  the  history  of  English 
political  agitation  than  the  aristocrat  who  assumes  the  pop- 
ular cause  and  cries  out  for  the  "rights"  of  the  "unenfran- 
chised millions."  But  it  was  something  new  to  find  a  man 
of  Mr.  Villiers's  class  devoting  himself  to  a  cause  so  entirely 
practical  and  business-like  as  that  of  the  repeal  of  the  Corn- 
laws.  Mr.  Villiers  brought  forward  for  several  successive 
sessions  in  the  House  of  Commons  a  motion  in  favor  of  the 
total  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws.  His  eloquence  and  his  argu- 
mentative power  served  the  great  purpose  of  drawing  the 
attention  of  the  country  to  the  whole  question,  and  making 
converts  to  the  principle  he  advocated.  The  House  of  Com- 
mons has  always  of  late  years  been  the  best  platform  from 
which  to  address  the  country.  In  political  agitation  it  has 
thus  been  made  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  schemes  of  leg- 
islation which  it  has  itself  always  begun  by  reprobating. 
But  Mr.  Villiers  might  have  gone  on  for  all  his  life  dividing 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  question  of  Free-trade,  with- 
out getting  much  nearer  to  his  object,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
manner  in  which  the  cause  was  taken  up  by  the  country,  and 
more  particularly  by  the  great  manufacturing  towns  of  the 
North.  Until  the  passing  of  Lord  Grey's  Reform  Bill  these 
towns  had  no  representation  in  Parliament.  They  seemed 
destined  after  that  event  to  make  up  for  their  long  exclusion 
from  representative  influence  by  taking  the  government  of 


FREE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         225 

the  country  into  their  own  hands.  Of  late  years  they  have 
lost  some  of  their  relative  influence.  They  have  not  now  all 
the  power  that  for  no  inconsiderable  time  they  undoubted- 
ly possessed.  The  reforms  they  chiefly  aimed  at  have  been 
carried,  and  the  spirit  which  in  times  of  stress  and  struggle 
kept  their  populations  almost  of  one  mind  has  less  necessity 
of  existence  now.  Manchester,  Birmingham,  and  Leeds  are 
no  whit  less  important  to  the  life  of  the  nation  now  than 
they  were  before  Free-trade.  But  their  supremacy  does  not 
exist  now  as  it  did  then.  At  that  time  it  was  town  against 
country ;  Manchester  representing  the  town,  and  the  whole 
Conservative  (at  one  period  almost  the  whole  land-owning) 
body  representing  the  country.  The  Manchester  school,  as 
it  was  called,  then  and  for  long  after  had  some  teachers  and 
leaders  who  were  of  themselves  capable  of  making  any  school 
powerful  and  respected.  With  the  Manchester  school  began 
a  new  kind  of  popular  agitation.  Up  to  that  time  agitation 
meant  appeal  to  passion,  and  lived  by  provoking  passion. 
Its  cause  might  be  good  or  bad,  but  the  way  of  promoting 
it  was  the  same.  The  Manchester  school  introduced  the  ag- 
itation which  appealed  to  reason  and  argument  only;  which 
stirred  men's  hearts  with  figures  of  arithmetic,  rather  than 
figures  of  speech,  and  which  converted  mob  meetings  to  po- 
litical economy. 

The  real  leader  of  the  movement  was  Mr.  Richard  Cobden. 
Mr.  Cobden  was  a  man  belonging  to  the  yeoman  class.  He 
had  received  but  a  moderate  education.  His  father  dying 
while  the  great  Free-trader  was  still  young,  Richard  Cob- 
den was  taken  in  charge  by  an  uncle,  who  had  a  wholesale 
warehouse  in  the  City  of  London,  and  who  gave  him  em- 
ployment there.  Cobden  afterward  became  a  partner  in  a 
Manchester  printed -cotton  factory;  and  he  travelled  occa- 
sionally on  the  commercial  business  of  this  establishment. 
He  had  a  great  liking  for  travel ;  but  not  by  any  means  as 
the  ordinary  tourist  travels ;  the  interest  of  Cobden  was  not 
in  scenery,  or  in  art,  or  in  ruins,  but  in  men.  He  studied  the 
condition  of  countries  with  a  view  to  the  manner  in  which 
it  affected  the  men  and  women  of  the  present,  and  through 
them  was  likely  to  affect  the  future.  On  everything  that 
he  saw  he  turned  a  quick  and  intelligent  eye;  and  he  saw 
for  himself  and  thought  for  himself.  Wherever  he  went  he 

10* 


226  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

wanted  to  learn  something.  lie  had  in  abundance  that 
peculiar  faculty  which  some  great  men  of  widely  different 
stamp  from  him  and  from  each  other  have  possessed ;  of 
which  Goethe  frankly  boasted,  and  which  Mirabeau  had 
more  largely  than  he  was  always  willing  to  acknowledge ; 
the  faculty  which  exacts  from  every  one  with  whom  its 
owner  comes  into  contact  some  contribution  to  his  stock 
of  information  and  to  his  advantage.  Cobden  could  learn 
something  from  everybody.  It  is  doubtful  whether  he  ever 
came  even  into  momentary  acquaintance  with  any  one  whom 
he  did  not  compel  to  yield  him  something  in  the  way  of  in- 
formation. He  travelled  very  widely  for  a  time,  when  trav- 
elling was  more  difficult  work  than  it  is  at  present.  He 
made  himself  familiar  with  most  of  the  countries  of  Europe, 
with  many  parts  of  the  East,  and,  what  was  then  a  rarer  ac- 
complishment, with  the  United  States  and  Canada.  He  did 
not  make  the  familiar  grand  tour,  and  then  dismiss  the  places 
he  had  seen  from  his  active  memory.  He  studied  them,  and 
visited  many  of  them  again  to  compare  early  with  later  im- 
pressions. This  Avas  in  itself  an  education  of  the  highest 
value  for  the  career  ho  proposed  to  pursue.  When  he  was 
about  thirty  years  of  age  he  began  to  acquire  a  certain  repu- 
tation as  the  author  of  pamphlets  directed  against  some  of 
the  pet  doctrines  of  old-fashioned  statesmanship — the  bal- 
ance of  power  in  Europe ;  the  necessity  of  maintaining  a 
State  Church  in  Ireland;  the  importance  of  allowing  no 
European  quarrel  to  go  on  without  England's  intervention ; 
and  similar  dogmas.  Mr.  Cobden's  opinions  then  were  very 
much  as  they  continued  to  the  day  of  his  death.  He  seemed 
to  have  come  to  the  maturity  of  his  convictions  all  at  once, 
and  to  have  passed  through  no  further  change  either  of 
growth  or  of  decay.  But  whatever  might  be  said  then  or 
now  of  the  doctrines  he  maintained,  there  could  be  only  one 
opinion  as  to  the  skill  and  force  which  upheld  them  with 
pen  as  well  as  tongue.  The  tongue,  however,  was  his  best 
weapon.  If  oratory  were  a  business  and  not  an  art — that 
is,  if  its  test  were  its  success  rather  than  its  form — then  it 
might  be  contended  reasonably  enough  that  Mr.  Cobden 
was  one  of  the  greatest  orators  England  has  ever  known. 
Nothing  could  exceed  the  persuasiveness  of  his  style.  His 
manner  was  simple,  sweet,  and  earnest.  It  was  persuasive, 


FREE-TEADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         227 

but  it  had  not  the  sort  of  persuasiveness  which  is  merely 
a  better  kind  of  plausibility.  It  persuaded  by  convincing. 
It  was  transparently  sincere.  The  light  of  its  convictions 
shone  all  through  it.  It  aimed  at  the  reason  and  the  judg- 
ment of  the  listener,  and  seemed  to  be  convincing  him  to  his 
own  interest  against  his  prejudices.  Cobden's  style  was  al- 
most exclusively  conversational ;  but  he  had  a  clear,  well- 
toned  voice,  with  a  quiet,  unassuming  power  in  it  which  en- 
abled him  to  make  his  words  heard  distinctly  and  without 
effort  all  through  the  great  meetings  he  had  often  to  address. 
His  speeches  were  full  of  variety.  He  illustrated  every  argu- 
ment by  something  drawn  from  his  personal  observation  or 
from  reading,  and  his  illustrations  were  always  striking,  ap- 
propriate, and  interesting.  He  had  a  large  amount  of  bright 
and  winning  humor,  and  he  spoke  the  simplest  and  purest 
English.  He  never  used  an  unnecessary  sentence,  or  failed 
for  a  single  moment  to  make  his  meaning  clear.  Many 
strong  opponents  of  Mr.  Cobden's  opinions  confessed,  even 
during  his  lifetime,  that  they  sometimes  found  with  dismay 
their  most  cherished  convictions  crumbling  away  beneath 
his  flow  of  easy  argument.  In  the  stormy  times  of  national 
passion  Mr.  Cobden  was  less  powerful.  When  the  question 
was  one  to  be  settled  by  the  rules  that  govern  man's  sub- 
stantial interests,  or  even  by  the  standing  rules,  if  such  an 
expression  may  be  allowed,  of  morality,  then  Cobden  was 
unequalled.  So  long  as  the  controversy  could  be  settled 
after  this  fashion — "  I  will  show  you  that  in  such  a  course 
you  are  acting  injuriously  to  your  own  interests;"  or  "You 
are  doing  what  a  fair  and  just  man  ought  not  to  do" — so 
long  as  argument  of  that  kind  could  sway  the  conduct  of 
men,  then  there  was  no  one  who  could  convince  as  Cobden 
could.  But  when  the  hour  and  mood  of  passion  came,  and 
a  man  or  a  nation  said,  "I  do  not  care  any  longer  whether 
this  is  for  my  interest  or  not — I  don't  care  whether  you  call 
it  right  or  wrong — this  way  my  instincts  drive  me,  and  this 
way  I  am  going" — then  Mr.  Cobden's  teaching,  the  very 
perfection  as  it  was  of  common-sense  and  fair  play,  was  out 
of  season.  It  could  not  answer  feeling  with  feeling.  It  was 
not  able  to  "overcrow,"  in  the  word  of  Shakspeare  and 
Spenser,  one  emotion  by  another.  The  defect  of  Mr.  Cob- 
den's style  of  mind  and  temper  is  fitly  illustrated  in  the  de- 


228  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ficiency  of  his  method  of  argument.  His  sort  of  education, 
his  modes  of  observation,  his  way  of  turning  travel  to  ac- 
count, all  went  together  to  make  him  the  man  he  was.  The 
apostle  of  common-sense  and  fair  dealing,  he  had  no  sympa- 
thy with  the  passions  of  men ;  he  did  not  understand  them ; 
they  passed  for  nothing  in  his  calculations.  His  judgment 
of  men  and  of  nations  was  based  far  too  much  on  his  knowl- 
edge of  his  own  motives  and  character.  He  knew  that  in 
any  given  case  he  could  always  trust  himself  to  act  the  part 
of  a  just  and  prudent  man;  and  he  assumed  that  all  the 
world  could  be  governed  by  the  rules  of  prudence  and  of 
equity.  History  had  little  interest  for  him,  except  as  it  testi- 
fied to  man's  advancement  and  steady  progress,  and  furnish- 
ed arguments  to  show  that  men  prospered  by  liberty,  peace, 
and  just  dealings  with  their  neighbors.  He  cared  little  or 
nothing  for  mere  sentiments.  Even  where  these  had  their 
root  in  some  human  tendency  that  was  noble  in  itself,  he  did 
not  reverence  them  if  they  seemed  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
men's  acting  peacefully  and  prudently.  He  did  not  see  why 
the  mere  idea  of  nationality,  for  example,  should  induce  peo- 
ple to  disturb  themselves  by  insurrections  and  wars,  so  long 
as  they  were  tolerably  well  governed,  and  allowed  to  exist 
in  peace  and  to  make  an  honest  living.  Thus  he  never  rep- 
resented more  than  half  the  English  character.  He  was  al- 
ways out  of  sympathy  with  his  countrymen  on  some  great 
political  question. 

But  he  seemed  as  if  he  were  designed  by  nature  to  con- 
duct to  success  such  an  agitation  as  that  against  the  Corn- 
laws.  He  found  some  colleagues  who  were  worthy  of  him. 
His  chief  companion  in  the  campaign  was  Mr.  Bright.  Mr. 
B right's  fame  is  not  so  completely  bound  up  with  the  repeal 
of  the  Corn-laws,  or  even  with  the  extension  of  the  suffrage, 
as  that  of  Mr.  Cobden.  If  Mr.  Bright  had  been  on  the  wrong 
side  of  every  cause  he  pleaded;  if  his  agitation  had  been  as 
conspicuous  for  failure  as  it  was  for  success,  he  would  still 
be  famous  among  English  public  men.  He  was  what  Mr. 
Cobden  was  not,  an  orator  of  the  very  highest  class.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  English  public  life  has  ever  produced  a 
man  who  possessed  more  of  the  qualifications  of  a  great  ora- 
tor than  Mr.  Bright.  He  had  a  commanding  presence;  not, 
indeed,  the  stately  and  colossal  form  of  O'Connell,but  a  mas- 


FREE-TRADE   AND   THE   LEAGUE.  229 

sive  figure,  a  large  head,  a  handsome  and  expressive  face. 
His  voice  was  powerful,  resonant,  clear,  with  a  peculiar  vi- 
bration in  it  which  lent  unspeakable  effect  to  any  passages 
of  pathos  or  of  scorn.  His  style  of  speaking  was  exactly 
what  a  conventional  demagogue's  ought  not  to  be.  It  was 
pure  to  austerity ;  it  was  stripped  of  all  superfluous  orna- 
ment. It  never  gushed  or  foamed.  It  never  allowed  itself 
to  be  mastered  by  passion.  The  first  peculiarity  that  struck 
the  listener  was  its  superb  self-restraint.  The  orator  at  his 
most  powerful  passages  appeared  as  if  he  were  rather  keep- 
ing in  his  strength  than  taxing  it  with  effort.  His  voice  was, 
for  the  most  part,  calm  and  measured ;  he  hardly  ever  in- 
dulged in  much  gesticulation.  He  never,  under  the  pressure 
of  whatever  emotion,  shouted  or  stormed.  The  fire  of  his 
eloquence  was  a  white -heat,  intense,  consuming,  but  never 
sparkling  or  sputtering.  He  had  an  admirable  gift  of  hu- 
mor and  a  keen  ironical  power.  He  had  read  few  books,  but 
of  those  he  read  he  was  a  master.  The  English  Bible  and 
Milton  were  his  chief  studies.  His  style  was  probably  form- 
ed, for  the  most  part,  on  the  Bible ;  for  although  he  may  have 
moulded  his  general  way  of  thinking  and  his  simple,  strong 
morality  on  the  lessons  he  found  in  Milton,  his  mere  lan- 
guage bore  little  trace  of  Milton's  stately  classicism  with 
its  Hellenized  and  Latinized  terminology,  but  was  above  all 
things  Saxon  and  simple.  Bright  was  a  man  of  the  mid- 
dle-class. His  family  were  Quakers  of  a  somewhat  austere 
mould.  They  were  manufacturers  of  carpets  in  Rochdale, 
Lancashire,  and  had  made  considerable  money  in  their  busi- 
ness. John  Bright,  therefore,  was  raised  above  the  tempta- 
tions which  often  beset  the  eloquent  young  man  who  takes 
up  a  democratic  cause  in  a  country  like  ours;  and,  as  our 
public  opinion  goes,  it  probably  was  to  his  advantage,  when 
first  he  made  his  appearance  in  Parliament,  that  he  was  well 
known  to  be  a  man  of  some  means,  and  not  a  clever  and 
needy  adventurer. 

Mr.  Bright  himself  has  given  an  interesting  account  of  his 
first  meeting  with  Mr.  Cobden  : 

"The  first  time  I  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Cobden  was 
in  connection  with  the  great  question  of  education.  I  went 
over  to  Manchester  to  call  upon  him  and  invite  him  to  come 
to  Rochdale  to  speak  at  a  meeting  about  to  be  held  in  the 


230  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

school-room  of  the  Baptist  Chapel  in  West  Street.  I  found 
him  in  his  counting-house.  I  told  him  what  I  wanted ;  his 
countenance  lighted  up  with  pleasure  to  find  that  others 
were  working  in  the  same  cause.  He,  without  hesitation, 
agreed  to  come.  He  came,  and  he  spoke;  and  though  he 
was  then  so  young  a  speaker,  yet  the  qualities  of  his  speech 
were  such  as  remained  with  him  so  long  as  he  was  able  to 
speak  at  all — clearness,  logic,  a  conversational  eloquence,  a 
persuasiveness  which,  when  combined  with  the  absolute  truth 
there  was  in  his  eye  and  in  his  countenance,  became  a  power 
it  was  almost  impossible  to  resist." 

Still  more  remarkable  is  the  description  Mr.  Bright  has 
given  of  Cobden's  first  appeal  to  him  to  join  in  the  agita- 
tion for  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws : 

"I  was  in  Leamington,  and  Mr. Cobden  called  on  me.  I 
was  then  in  the  depths  of  grief — I  may  almost  say  of  de- 
spair— for  the  light  and  sunshine  of  my  house  had  been  ex- 
tinguished. All  that  was  left  on  earth  of  my  young  wife, 
except  the  memory  of  a  sainted  life  and  a  too  brief  happi- 
ness, was  lying  still  and  cold  in  the  chamber  above  us.  Mr. 
Cobden  called  on  me  as  his  friend  and  addressed  me,  as  you 
may  suppose,  with  words  of  condolence.  After  a  time  he 
looked  up  and  said :  '  There  are  thousands  and  thousands  of 
homes  in  England  at  this  moment  where  wives  and  mothers 
and  children  are  dying  of  hunger.  Now,  when  the  first  par- 
oxysm of  your  grief  is  passed,  I  would  advise  you  to  come 
with  me,  and  we  will  never  rest  until  the  Corn -laws  are 
repealed.' " 

The  invitation  thus  given  was  cordially  accepted,  and 
from  that  time  dates  the  almost  unique  fellowship  of  these 
two  men,  who  worked  together  in  the  closest  brotherhood, 
who  loved  each  other  as  not  all  brothers  do,  who  were  as- 
sociated so  closely  in  the  public  mind  that  until  Cobden's 
death  the  name  of  one  was  scarcely  ever  mentioned  without 
that  of  the  other.  There  was  something  positively  romantic 
about  their  mutual  attachment.  Each  led  a  noble  life ;  each 
was  in  his  own  way  a  man  of  genius;  each  was  simple  and 
strong.  Rivalry  between  them  would  have  been  impossible, 
although  they  were  every  day  being  compared  and  contrast- 
ed by  both  friendly  and  unfriendly  critics.  Their  gifts  were 
admirably  suited  to  make  them  powerful  allies.  Each  had 


FREE-TRADE  AND  THE   LEAGUE.  231 

something  that  the  other  wanted.     Bright  had  not  Cobden's 

s  o 

winning  persuasiveness  nor  his  surprising  ease  and  force  of 
argument.  But  Cobden  had  not  anything  like  his  compan- 
ion's oratorical  power.  He  had  not  the  tones  of  scorn,  of 
pathos,  of  humor,  and  of  passion.  The  two  together  made  a 
genuine  power  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  on  the  plat- 
form. Mr.  Kinglake,  who  is  as  little  in  sympathy  with  the 
general  political  opinions  of  Cobden  and  Bright  as  any  man 
well  could  be,  has  borne  admirable  testimony  to  their  ar- 
gumentative power  and  to  their  influence  over  the  House 
of  Commons :  "  These  two  orators  had  shown  with  what  a 
strength,  with  what  a  masterly  skill,  with  what  patience, 
with  what  a  high  courage,  they  could  carry  a  scientific  truth 
through  the  storms  of  politics.  They  had  shown  that  they 
could  arouse  and  govern  the  assenting  thousands  who  listen- 
ed to  them  with  delight — that  they  could  bend  the  House 
of  Commons  —  that  they  could  press  their  creed  upon  a 
Prime-minister,  and  put  upon  his  mind  so  hard  a  stress,  that 
after  awhile  he  felt  it  to  be  a  torture  and  a  violence  to  his 
reason  to  have  to  make  a  stand  against  them.  Nay,  more. 
Each  of  these  gifted  men  had  proved  that  he  could  go  brave- 
ly into  the  midst  of  angry  opponents,  could  show  them  their 
fallacies  one  by  one,  destroy  their  favorite  theories  before 
their  very  faces,  and  triumphantly  argue  them  down."  It 
was,  indeed,  a  scientific  truth  which,  in  the  first  instance, 
Cobden  and  Bright  undertook  to  force  upon  the1  recognition 
of  a  Parliament  composed  in  great  measure  of  the  very  men 
who  were  taught  to  believe  that  their  own  personal  and 
class  interests  were  bound  up  with  the  maintenance  of  the 
existing  economical  creed.  Those  who  hold  that  because  it 
was  a  scientific  truth  the  task  of  its  advocates  ought  to  have 
been  easy,  will  do  well  to  observe  the  success  of  the  resist- 
ance which  has  been  thus  far  offered  to  it  in  almost  every 
country  but  England  alone. 

These  men  had  many  assistants  and  lieutenants  well 
worthy  to  act  with  them  and  under  them.  Mr.  W.  J.  Fox, 
for  instance,  a  Unitarian  minister  of  great  popularity  and 
remarkable  eloquence,  seemed  at  one  time  almost  to  divide 
public  admiration  as  an  orator  with  Mr.  Cobden  and  Mr. 
Bright.  Mr.  Milner  Gibson,  who  had  been  a  Tory,  went  over 
to  the  movement,  and  gave  it  the  assistance  of  trained  Par- 


232  A  HISTORY  OF   OUE  OWN   TIMES. 

liamentary  knowledge  and  very  considerable  debating  skill. 
In  the  Lancashire  towns  the  League  had  the  advantage  of 

O  O 

being  officered,  for  the  most  part,  by  shrewd  and  sound  men 
of  business,  who  gave  their  time  as  freely  as  they  gave  their 
money  to  the  advancement  of  the  cause.  It  is  curious  to 
compare  the  manner  in  which  the  Anti-Corn-law  agitation 
was  conducted  with  the  manner  in  which  the  contemporary 
agitation  in  Ireland  for  the  repeal  of  the  Union  was  carried 
on.  In  England  the  agitation  was  based  on  the  most  strict- 
ly business  principles.  The  leaders  spoke  and  acted  as  if.  the 
League  itself  were  some  great  commercial  firm,  which  was 
bound,  above  all  things,  to  fulfil  its  promises  and  keep  to  the 
letter  as  well  as  the  spirit  of  its  engagements.  There  was 
no  boasting ;  there  was  no  exaggeration ;  there  were  no  ap- 
peals to  passion;  no  romantic  rousings  of  sentimental  emo- 
tion. The  system  of  the  agitation  was  as  clear,  straightfor- 
ward, and  business  -  like  as  its  purpose.  In  Ireland  there 
were  monster  meetings,  with  all  manner  of  dramatic  and 
theatric  effects — with  rhetorical  exaggeration,  and  vehement 
appeal  to  passion  and  to  ancient  memory  of  suffering.  The 
cause  was  kept  up  from  day  to  day  by  assurances  of  neat- 
success  so  positive  that  it  is  sometimes  hard  to  believe  those 
who  made  them  could  themselves  have  been  deceived  by 
them.  No  doubt  the  difference  will  be  described  by  many 
as  the  mere  result  of  the  difference  between  the  one  cause 
and  the  other;  between  the  agitation  for  Free-trade,  clear, 
tangible,  and  practical,  and  that  for  repeal  of  the  Union, 
with  its  shadowy  object  and  its  visionary  impulses.  But  a 
better  explanation  of  the  difference  will  be  found  in  the  dif- 
ferent natures  to  which  an  appeal  had  to  be  made.  It  is 
not  by  any  means  certain  that  O'Connell's  cause  was  a  mere 
shadow;  nor  will  it  appear,  if  we  study  the  criticism  of  the 
time,  that  the  guides  of  public  opinion  who  pronounced  the 
repeal  agitation  absurd  and  ludicrous  had  any  better  words 
at  first  for  the  movement  against  the  Corn-law.  Cobden 
and  Bright  on  the  one  side,  O'Connell  on  the  other,  knew 
the  audiences  they  had  to  address.  It  would  have  been  im- 
possible to  stir  the  blood  of  the  Lancashire  artisan  by  means 
of  the  appeals  which  went  to  the  very  heart  of  the  dreamy, 
sentimental,  impassioned  Celt  of  the  South  of  Ireland.  The 
Munster  peasant  would  have  understood  little  of  such  clear, 


FREE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         233 

penetrating,  business-like  argument  as  that  by  which  Cobden 
and  Bright  enforced  their  doctrines.  Had  O'Connell's  cause 
been  as  practical  and  its  success  been  as  immediately  attain- 
able as  that  of  the  Anti-Corn-law  League,  the  great  Irish 
agitator  would  still  have  had  to  address  his  followers  in  a 
different  tone  of  appeal.  "All  men  are  not  alike,"  says  the 
Norman  butler  to  the  Flemish  soldier  in  Scott's  "Betrothed  :" 
"  that  which  will  but  warm  your  Flemish  hearts  will  put 
wildfire  into  Norman  brains ;  and  what  may  only  encourage 
your  countrymen  to  man  the  walls,  will  make  ours  fly  over 
the  battlements."  The  most  impassioned  Celt,  however,  will 
admit  that  in  the  Anti-Corn-law  movement  of  Cobden  and 
Bright,  with  its  rigid  truthfulness  and  its  strict  proportion 
between  capacity  and  promise,  there  was  an  entirely  new 
dignity  lent  to  popular  agitation  which  raised  it  to  the  con- 
dition of  statesmanship  in  the  rough.  The  Reform  agitation 
in  England  had  not  been  conducted  without  some  exaggera- 
tion, much  appeal  to  passion,  and  some  not  by  any  means 
indistinct  allusion  to  the  reserve  of  popular  force  which 
might  be  called  into  action  if  legislators  and  peers  proved 
insensible  to  argument.  The  era  of  the  Anti-Corn-law 
movement  was  a  new  epoch  altogether  in  English  political 
controversy. 

The  League,  however,  successful  as  it  might  be  through- 
out the  country,  had  its  great  work  to  do  in  Parliament. 
The  Free -trade  leaders  must  have  found  their  hearts  sink 
within  them  when  they  came  sometimes  to  confront  that 
fortress  of  traditions  and  of  vested  rights.  Even  after  the 
change  made  in  favor  of  manufacturing  and  middle-class  in- 
terests by  the  Reform  Bill,  the  House  of  Commons  was  still 
composed,  ag  to  nine-tenths  of  its  whole  number,  by  repre- 
sentatives of  the  landlords.  The  entire  House  of  Lords  then 
was  constituted  of  the  owners  of  land.  All  tradition,  all 
prestige,  all  the  dignity  of  aristocratic  institutions,  seemed 
to  be  naturally  arrayed  against  the  new  movement,  conduct- 
ed as  it  was  by  manufacturers  and  traders  for  the  benefit, 
seemingly,  of  trade  and  those  whom  it  employed.  The  artisan 
population,  who  might  have  been  formidable  as  a  disturbing 
element,  were,  on  the  whole,  rather  against  the  Free-traders 
than  for  them.  Nearly  all  the  great  official  leaders  had  to 
be  converted  to  the  doctrines  of  Free-trade.  Many  of  the 


234  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Whigs  were  willing  enough  to  admit  the  case  of  Free-trade 
as  the  young  Scotch  lady  mentioned  by  Sydney  Smith  ad- 
mitted the  case  of  love,  "in  the  abstract;"  but  they  could 
not  recognize  the  possibility  of  applying  it  in  the  compli- 
cated financial  conditions  of  an  artificial  system  like  ours. 
Some  of  the  Whigs  were  in  favor  of  a  fixed  duty  in  place  of 
the  existing  sliding  -  scale.  The  leaders  of  the  movement 
had,  indeed,  to  resist  a  very  dangerous  temptation  coming 
from  statesmen  who  professed  to  be  in  accordance  with 
them  as  to  the  mere  principle  of  protection,  but  who  were 
always  endeavoring  to  persuade  them  that  they  had  better 
accept  any  decent  compromise,  and  not  push  their  demands 
to  extremes.  The  witty  peer  who  in  a  former  generation 
answered  an  advocate  of  moderate  reform  by  asking  him 
what  he  thought  of  moderate  chastity,  might  have  had 
many  opportunities,  if  he  had  been  engaged  in  the  Free- 
trade  movement,  of  turning  his  epigram  to  account. 

Mr.  Macaulay,  for  instance,  wrote  to  the  electors  of  Edin- 
burgh to  remonstrate  with  them  on  what  he  considered  their 
fanatical  and  uncompromising  adherence  to  the  principle  of 
Free-trade.  "  In  my  opinion,"  Mr.  Macaulay  wrote  to  his 
constituents,  "  you  are  all  wrong  —  not  because  you  think 
all  protection  bad, for  I  think  so  too;  not  even  because  you 
avow  your  opinion  and  attempt  to  propagate  it,  for  I  have 
always  done  the  same,  and  shall  do  the  same ;  but  because, 
being  in  a  situation  where  your  only  hope  is  in  a  compro- 
mise, you  refuse  to  hear  of  compromise  ;  because,  being  in  a 
situation  where  every  person  who  will  go  a  step  with  you 
on  the  right  road  ought  to  be  cordially  welcomed,  you  drive 
from  you  those  who  are  willing  and  desirous  to  go  with  yon 
half-way.  To  this  policy  I  will  be  no  party. .  I  will  not 
abandon  those  with  whom  I  have  hitherto  acted,  and  with- 
out whose  help  I  am  confident  that  no  great  improvement 
can  be  effected,  for  an  object  purely  selfish."  It  had  not  oc- 
curred to  Mr.  Macaulay  that  any  party  but  the  Whigs  could 
bring  in  any  measure  of  fiscal  or  other  reform  worth  the 
having  ;  and,  indeed,  he  probably  thought  it  would  be  some- 
thing like  an  act  of  ingratitude  amounting  to  a  species  of 
sacrilege  to  accept  reform  from  any  hands  but  those  of  its 
recognized  Whig  patrons.  The  Anti-Corn-law  agitation  in- 
troduced a  game  of  politics  into  England  which  astonished 


FREE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         235 

and  considerably  discomfited  steady-going  politicians  like 
Macaulay.  The  League  men  did  not  profess  to  be  bound 
by  any  indefeasible  bond  of  allegiance  to  the  Whig  party. 
They  were  prepared  to  co-operate  with  any  party  whatever 
which  would  undertake  to  abolish  the  Coi'n  -  laws.  Their 
agitation  would  have  done  some  good  in  this  way,  if  in  no 
other  sense.  It  introduced  a  more  robust  and  independent 
spirit  into  political  life.  It  is  almost  ludicrous  sometimes  to 
read  the  diatribes  of  suppoi'ters  of  Lord  Melbourne's  Gov- 
ernment, for  example,  against  any  one  who  should  presume 
to  think  that  any  object  in  the  mind  of  a  true  patriot,  or  at 
least  of  a  true  Liberal,  could  equal  in  importance  that  of 
keeping  the  Melbourne  Ministry  in  power.  Great  reforms 
have  been  made  by  Conservative  governments  in  our  own 
days,  because  the  new  political  temper  which  was  growing 
up  in  England  refused  to  affirm  that  the  patent  of  reform 
rested  in  the  possession  of  any  particular  party,  and  that  if 
the  holders  of  the  monopoly  did  not  find  it  convenient,  or 
were  not  in  the  humor  to  use  it  any  further  just  then,  no 
one  else  must  venture  to  interfere  in  the  matter,  or  to  un- 
dertake the  duty  which  they  had  declined  to  perform.  At 
the  time  that  Macaulay  wrote  his  letter,  however,  it  had 
not  entered  into  the  mind  of  any  Whig  to  believe  it  possi- 
ble that  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws  was  to  be  the  work  of 
a  great  Conservative  minister,  done  at  the  bidding  of  two 
Radical  politicians. 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  Anti- Corn-law  League 
were  not  in  the  least  discouraged  by  the  accession  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  to  power.  To  them  the  fixed  duty  proposed 
by  Lord  John  Russell  was  as  objectionable  as  Peel's  sliding- 
scale.  Their  hopes  seem  rather  to  have  gone  up  than  gone 
down  when  the  minister  came  into  power  whose  adherents, 
unlike  those  of  Lord  John  Russell,  were  absolutely  against 
the  very  principle  of  Free-trade.  It  is  of  some  importance, 
in  estimating  the  morality  of  the  course  pursued  by  Peel,  to 
observe  the  opinion  formed  of  his  professions  and  his  proba- 
ble purposes  by  the  shrewd  men  who  led  the  Anti-Corn-law 
League.  The  grand  charge  against  Peel  is  that  he  betray- 
ed his  party;  that  he  induced  them  to  continue  their  alle- 
giance to  him  on  the  promise  that  he  would  never  concede 
the  principle  of  Free-trade ;  and  that  he  used  his  power  to 


236  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

establish  Free-trade  when  the  time  came  to  choose  between 
it  and  a  surrender  of  office.  Now  it  is  certain  that  the 
League  always  regarded  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  a  Free-trader  in 
heart;  as  one  who  fully  admitted  the  principle  of  Free-trade, 
but  who  did  not  see  his  way  just  then  to  deprive  the  agri- 
cultural interest  of  the  protection  on  which  they  had  for  so 
many  years  been  allowed  and  encouraged  to  lean.  In  the 
debate  after  the  general  election  of  1841 — the  debate  which 
turned  out  the  Melbourne  Ministry — Mr.  Cobden,  then  for 
the  first  time  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  said  :  "I 
am  a  Free-trader;  I  call  myself  neither  Whig  nor  Tory.  I 
am  proud  to  acknowledge  the  virtue  of  the  Whig  Ministry 
in  coming  out  from  the  ranks  of  the  monopolists  and  advan- 
cing three  parts  out  of  four  in  my  own  direction.  Yet  if 
the  right  honorable  baronet  opposite  (Sir  R.  Peel)  advances 
one  step  farther,  I  will  be  the  first  to  meet  him  half-way  and 
shake  hands  with  him."  Some  years  later  Mr.  Cobden  said, 
at  Birmingham,  "There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Sir  Robert 
Peel  is  at  heart  as  good  a  Free-trader  as  I  am.  He  has  told 
us  so  in  the  House  of  Commons  again  and  again ;  nor  do  I 
doubt  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  has  in  his  inmost  heart  the  de- 
sire to  be  the  man  who  shall  carry  out  the  principles  of 
Free-trade  in  this  country."  Sir  Robert  Peel  had,  indeed, 
as  Mr.  Cobden  said,  again  and  again  in  Parliament  express- 
ed his  conviction  as  to  the  general  truth  of  the  principles  of 
Free-trade.  In  1842,  he  declared  it  to  be  utterly  beyond  the 
power  of  Parliament,  and  a  mere  delusion,  to  say  that  by  any 
duty,  fixed  or  otherwise,  a  certain,  price  could  be  guaranteed 
to  the  producer.  In  the  same  year  he  expressed  his  belief 
that  "on  the  general  principle  of  Free-trade  there  is  now  no 
great  difference  of  opinion,  and  that  all  agree  in  the  general 
rule  that  we  should  buy  in  the  cheapest  and  sell  in  the  dear- 
est market."  This  expression  of  opinion  called  forth  an  iron- 
ical cheer  from  the  benches  of  opposition.  Peel  knew  well 
what  the  cheer  was  meant  to  convey.  He  knew  it  meant 
to  ask  him  why,  then,  he  did  not  allow  the  country  to  buy 
its  grain  in  the  cheapest  market.  He  promptly  added — "I 
know  the  meaning  of  that  cheer.  I  do  not  wish  to  raise  a 
discussion  on  the  Corn-laws  or  the  Sugar  Duties,  which  I 
contend,  however,  are  exceptions  to  the  general  rule,  and  I 
will  not  go  into  that  question  now."  The  press  of  the  day, 


FEEE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         237 

whether  for  or  against  Peel,  commented  upon  his  declara- 
tions and  his  measures  as  indicating  clearly  that  the  bent 
of  his  mind  was  toward  Free-trade  even  in  grain.  At  all 
events,  he  had  reached  that  mental  condition  when  he  re- 
garded the  case  of  grain,  like  that  of  sugar,  as  a"  necessary 
exception,  for  the  time,  to  the  operation  of  a  general  rule. 

It  ought  to  have  been  obvious  that  if  exceptional  circum- 
stances should  arise,  pulling  more  strongly  in  the  direction 
of  the  League,  Sir  Robert  Peel's  own  explicit  declarations 
must  bind  him  to  recognize  the  necessity  of  applying  the 
Free-trade  principles  even  to  corn.  "  Sir  Robert  Peel,"  says 
his  cousin,  Sir  Laurence  Peel,  in  a  sketch  of  the  life  and  char- 
acter of  the  great  statesman,  "  had  been,  as  I  have  said,  al- 
ways a  Free-trader.  The  questions  to  which  he  had  declined 
to  apply  those  principles  had  been  viewed  by  him  as  excep- 
tional. The  Corn-law  had  been  so  treated  by  many  able 
exponents  of  the  principles  of  Free-trade."  Sir  Robert  Peel 
himself  has  left  it  on  record  that  during  the  discussions  on 
the  Corn-law  of  1842  he  was  more  than  once  pressed  to  give 
a  guarantee, "  so  far  as  a  minister  could  give  it,"  that  the 
amount  of  protection  established  by  that  law  should  be  per- 
manently adhered  to ;  "  but  although  I  did  not  then  contem- 
plate the  necessity  for  further  change,  I  uniformly  refused  to 
fetter  the  discretion  of  the  Government  by  any  such  assur- 
ances as  those  that  were  required  of  me."  It  is  evident  that 
the  condition  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  opinions  was,  even  as  far 
back  as  1842,  something  very  different  indeed  from  that  of 
the  ordinary  county  member  or  pledged  Protectionist,  and 
that  Peel  had  done  all  he  could  to  make  this  clear  to  his 
party.  A  minister  Avho,  in  1842,  refused  to  fetter  the  dis- 
cretion of  his  Government  in  dealing  with  the  protection 
of  home-grown  grain  ought  not,  on  the  face  of  things,  to  be 
accused  of  violating  his  pledges  and  betraying  his  party,  if, 
four  years  later,  under  the  pressure  of  extraordinary  circum- 
stances, he  made  up  his  mind  to  the  abolition  of  such  a  pro- 
tection. Let  us  test  this  in  a  manner  that  will  be  familiar 
to  our  own  time.  Suppose  a  Prime-minister  is  pressed  by 
some  of  his  own  party  to  give  the  House  of  Commons  a 
guarantee,  "so  far  as  a  minister  could  give  it,"  that  the 
principle  of  the  State  Church  Establishment  in  England 
shall  be  permanently  adhered  to.  He  declines  to  fetter  the 


238  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

discretion  of  the  Government  in  the  future.  Is  it  not  evi- 
dent that  such  an  answer  would  be  taken  by  nine  out  of 
ten  of  his  listeners  to  be  ominous  of  some  change  to  the 
Established  Church?  If  four  years  after  the  same  minister 
were  to  propose  to  disestablish  the  Church,  he  might  be  de- 
nounced and  he  might  even  be  execrated,  but  no  one  could 
fairly  accuse  him  of  having  violated  his  pledge  and  betrayed 
his  party. 

The  country  party,  however,  did  not  understand  Sir 
Robert  Peel  as  their  opponents  and  his  assuredly  under- 
stood him.  They  did  not  at  this  time  believe  in  the  possi- 
bility of  any  change.  Free-trade  was  to  them  little  more 
than  an  abstraction.  They  did  not  much  care  who  preached 
it  out  of  Parliament.  They  were  convinced  that  the  state 
of  things  they  saw  around  them  when  they  were  boys  would 
continue  to  the  end.  They  looked  on  Mr.  Villiers  and  his 
annual  motion  in  favor  of  Free-trade  very  much  as  a  stout 
old  Tory  of  later  times  might  regard  the  annual  motion  for 
woman  suffrage.  Both  parties  in  the  House — that  is  to  say, 
both  of  the  parties  from  whom  ministers  were  taken — alike 
set  themselves  against  the  introduction  of  any  such  measure. 
The  supporters  of  it  were,  with  one  exception,  not  men  of 
family  and  rank.  It  was  agitated  for  a  good  deal  out-of- 
doors,  but  agitation  had  not  up  to  that  time  succeeded  in 
making  much  way  even  with  a  reformed  Parliament.  The 
country  party  observed  that  some  men  among  the  two  lead- 
ing sets  went  farther  in  favor  of  the  abstract  principle  than 
others:  but  it  did  not  seem  to  them  that  that  really  affected 
the  practical  question  very  much.  In  1842  Mr.  Disraeli 
himself  was  one  of  those  who  stood  up  for  the  Free-trade 
principle,  and  insisted  that  it  had  been  rather  the  inherited 
principle  of  the  Conservatives  than  of  the  Whigs.  Country 
gentlemen  did  not,  therefore,  greatly  concern  themselves 
about  the  practical  work  doing  in  Manchester,  or  the  pro- 
fessions of  abstract  opinion  so  often  made  in  Parliament. 
They  did  not  see  that  the  mind  of  their  leader  was  avowed- 
ly in  a  progressive  condition  on  the  subject  of  Free-trade. 
Because  they  could  not  bring  themselves  to  question  for  a 
moment  the  principle  of  protection  for  home-grown  grain, 
they  made  up  their  minds  that  it  was  a  principle  as  sacred 
with  him.  Against  that  conviction  no  evidence  could  pre- 


FREE-TRADE  AND  THE  LEAGUE.         239 

vail.  It  was  with  them  a  point  of  conscience  and  honor; 
it  would  have  seemed  an  insult  to  their  leader  to  believe 
even  his  own  words,  if  these  seemed  to  say  that  it  was  a 
mere  question  of  expediency,  convenience,  and  time  with 
him. 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  if  Sir  Robert  Peel  had 
devoted  himself  more  directly  to  what  Mr.  Disraeli  after- 
ward called  educating  his  party.  Perhaps  if  he  had  made 
it  part  of  his  duty  as  a  leader  to  prepare  the  minds  of  his 
followers  for  the  fact  that  protection  for  grain,  having  ceased 
to  be  tenable  as  an  economic  principle,  would  possibly  some 
day  have  to  be  given  up  as  a  practice,  he  might  have  taken 
his  party  along  with  him.  He  might  have  been  able  to 
show  them,  as  the  events  have  shown  them  since,  that  the 
introduction  of  free  corn  would  be  a  blessing  to  the  popula- 
tion of  England  in  general,  and  would  do  nothing  but  good 
for  the  landed  interest  as  well.  The  influence  of  Peel  at 
that  time,  and  indeed  all  through  his  administration  up  to 
the  introduction  of  his  Free-trade  measures,  was  limitless,  so 
far  as  his  party  were  concerned.  He  could  have  done  any- 
thing with  them.  Indeed,  we  find  no  evidence  so  clear  to 
prove  that  Peel  had  not  in  1842  made  up  his  mind  to  the 
introduction  of  Free -trade  as  the  fact  that  he  did  not  at 
once  begin  to  educate  his  party  to  it.  This  is  to  be  regret- 
ted. The  measure  might  have  been  passed  by  common  ac- 
cord. There  is  something  not  altogether  without  pathetic 
influence  in  the  thought  of  that  country  party  whom  Peel 
had  led  so  long,  and  who  adored  him  so  thoroughly,  turning 
away  from  him  and  against  him,  and  mournfully  seeking  an- 
other leader.  There  is  something  pathetic  in  the  thought 
that,  rightly  or  wrongly,  they  should  have  believed  them- 
selves betrayed  by  their  chief.  But  Peel,  to  begin  with, was 
a  reserved,  cold,  somewhat  awkward  man.  He  was  not 
effusive;  he  did  not  pour  out  his  emotions  and  reveal  all  his 
changes  of  opinion  in  bursts  of  confidence  even  to  his  habit- 
ual associates.  He  brooded  over  these  things  in  his  own 
mind  ;  he  gave  such  expression  to  them  in  open  debate  as 
any  passing  occasion  seemed  strictly  to  call  for ;  and  he  as- 
sumed, perhaps,  that  the  gradual  changes  operating  in  his 
views  when  thus  expressed  were  understood  by  his  follow- 
ers. Above  all,  it  is  probable  that  Peel  himself  did  not  see 


240  A  HISTOKY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

until  almost  the  last  moment  that  the  time  had  actually 
come  when  the  principle  of  protection  must  give  way  to 
other  and  more  weighty  claims.  In  his  speech  announcing 
his  intended  legislation  in  1846,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  with  a 
proud  frankness  which  was  characteristic  of  him,  denied  that 
his  altered  course  of  action  was  due  exclusively  to  the  fail- 
ure of  the  potato  crop  and  the  dread  of  famine  in  Ireland. 
"I  will  not,"  he  said,"  withhold  the  homage  which  is  due 
to  the  progress  of  reason  and  of  truth  by  denying  that  my 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  Protection  have  undergone  a 
change.  ...  I  will  not  direct  the  course  of  the  vessel  by 
observations  taken  in  1842."  But  it  is  probable  that  if  the 
Irish  famine  had  not  threatened,  the  moment  for  introducing 
the  new  legislation  might  have  been  indefinitely  postponed. 
The  prospects  of  the  Anti-Corn-law  League  did  not  look  by 
any  means  bright  when  the  session  preceding  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  Free -trade  legislation  came  to  an  end.  The 
number  of  votes  that  the  League  could  count  on  in  Parlia- 
ment did  not  much  exceed  that  which  the  advocates  of 
Home  Rule  have  been  able  to  reckon  up  in  our  day.  Noth- 
ing in  1843  or  in  the  earlier  part  of  1845  pointed  to  any  im- 
mediate necessity  for  Sir  Robert  Peel's  testing  the  progress 
of  his  own  convictions  by  reducing  them  into  the  shape  of 
practical  action.  It  is,  therefore,  not  hard  to  understand 
how  even  a  far-seeing  and  conscientious  statesman,  busy 
with  the  practical  work  of  each  day,  might  have  put  off  tak- 
ing definite  counsel  with  himself  as  to  the  introduction  of 
measures  for  which  just  then  there  seemed  no  special  neces- 
sity, and  which  could  hardly  be  introduced  without  bitter 
controversy. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

FAMINE   FORCES   PEEL'S   HAND. 

WE  see  how  the  two  great  parties  of  the  State  stood  with 
regard  to  this  question  of  Free -trade.  The  Whigs  were 
steadily  gravitating  toward  it.  Their  leaders  did  not  quite 
see  their  way  to  accept  it  as  a  principle  of  practical  states- 
manship, but  it  was  evident  that  their  acceptance  of  it  was 


FAMINE   FORCES  PEEL'S  HAND.  241 

only  a  question  of  time,  and  of  no  long  time.  The  leader  of 
the  Tory  party  was  being  drawn  day  by  day  more  in  the 
same  direction.  Both  leaders,  Russell  and  Peel,  had  gone 
so  far  as  to  admit  the  general  principle  of  Free-trade.  Peel 
had  contended  that  grain  was,  in  England,  a  necessary  ex- 
ception ;  Russell  was  not  of  opinion  that  the  time  had  come 
when  it  could  be  treated  otherwise  than  as  an  exception. 
The  Free -trade  party,  small,  indeed,  in  its  Parliamentary 
force,  but  daily  growing  more  and  more  powerful  with  the 
country,  would  take  nothing  from  either  leader  but  Free- 
trade  sans  phrase;  and  would  take  that  from  either  leader 
without  regard  to  partisan  considerations.  It  is  evident  to 
any  one  who  knows  anything  of  the  working  of  our  system 
of  government  by  party,  that  this  must  soon  have  ended  in 
one  or  other  of  the  two  great  ruling  parties  forming  an  alli- 
ance with  the  Free-traders.  If  unforeseen  events  had  not 
interposed,  it  is  probable  that  conviction  would  first  have 
fastened  on  the  minds  of  the  Whigs,  and  that  they  would 
have  had  the  honor  of  abolishing  the  Corn -laws.  They 
were  out  of  office,  and  did  not  seem  likely  to  get  back  soon 
to  it  by  their  own  power,  and  the  Free-trade  party  would 
have  come  in  time  to  be  a  very  desirable  ally.  It  would  be 
idle  to  pretend  to  doubt  that  the  convictions  of  political  par- 
ties are  hastened  on  a  good  deal  under  our  system  by  the 
yearning  of  those  who  are  out  of  office  to  get  the  better  of 
those  who  are  in.  Statesmen  in  England  are  converted  as 
Henry  of  Navarre  became  Catholic :  we  do  not  say  that  they 
actually  change  their  opinions  for  the  sake  of  making  them- 
selves eligible  for  power,  but  a  change  which  has  been  grow- 
ing up  imperceptibly,  and  which  might  otherwise  have  taken 
a  long  time  to  declare  itself,  is  stimulated  thus  to  confess 
itself  and  come  out  into  the  light.  But  in  the  case  of  the 
Anti-Corn-law  agitation,  an  event  over  which  political  par- 
ties had  no  control  intervened  to  spur  the.  intent  of  the  Prime- 
minister.  Mr.  Bright,  many  years  after,  when  pronouncing 
the  eulogy  of  his  dead  friend  Cobden,  described  what  hap- 
pened in  a  fine  sentence:  "Famine  itself,  against  which  we 
had  warred,  joined  us."  In  the  autumn  of  1845  the  potato 
rot  began  in  Ireland. 

The  vast  majority  of  the  working  population  of  Ireland 
were  known  to  depend  absolutely  on  the  potato  for  subsist- 

I.— 11 


242  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

ence.  In  the  northern  province,  where  the  population  were 
of  Scotch  extraction,  the  oatmeal,  the  brose  of  their  ances- 
tors, still  supplied  the  staple  of  their  food ;  but  in  the  south- 
ern and  western  provinces  a  large  proportion  of  the  peas- 
antry actually  lived  on  the  potato,  and  the  potato  alone.  In 
these  districts  whole  generations  grew  up,  lived,  married,  and 
passed  away,  without  having  ever  tasted  flesh  meat.  It 
was  evident,  then,  that  a  failure  in  the  potato  crop  would  be 
equivalent  to  famine.  Many  of  the  laboring  class  received 
little  or  no  money  wages.  They  lived  on  what  was  called 
the  "  cottier  tenant  system ;"  that  is  to  say,  a  man  worked 
for  a  land-owner  on  condition  of  getting  the  use  of  a  little 
scrap  of  land  for  himself,  on  which  to  grow  potatoes  to  be 
the  sole  food  of  himself  and  his  family.  The  news  came,  in 
the  autumn  of  1845,  that  the  long  continuance  of  sunless  wet 
and  cold  had  imperilled,  if  not  already  destroyed,  the  food 
of  a  people. 

The  cabinet  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  held  hasty  meetings  close- 
ly following  each  other.  People  began  to  ask  whether  Par- 
liament was  about  to  be  called  together,  and  whether  the 
Government  had  resolved  on  a  bold  policy.  The  Anti-Corn- 
law  League  were  clamoring  for  the  opening  of  the  ports. 
The  Prime-minister  himself  was  strongly  in  favor  of  such  a 
course.  He  urged  upon  his  colleagues  that  all  restrictions 
upon  the  importation  of  foreign  corn  should  be  suspended 
either  by  an  Order  in  Council,  or  by  calling  Parliament  to- 
gether and  recommending  such  a  measure  from  the  throne. 
It  is  now  known  that  in  offering  this  advice  to  his  colleagues 
Peel  accompanied  it  with  the  expression  of  a  doubt  as  to 
whether  it  would  ever  be  possible  to  restore  the  restrictions 
that  had  once  been  suspended.  Indeed,  this  doubt  must 
have  filled  every  mind.  The  League  were  openly  declaring 
that  one  reason  why  they  called  for  the  opening  of  the  ports 
was  that,  once  opened,  they  never  could  be  closed  again. 
The  doubt  was  enough  for  some  of  the  colleagues  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel.  It  seems  marvellous  now  how  responsible 
statesmen  could  struggle  for  the  retention  of  restrictions 
which  were  so  unpopular  and  indefensible  that  if  they  were 
once  suspended,  under  the  pressure  of  no  matter  what  excep- 
tional necessity,  they  never  could  be  reimposed.  The  Duke 
of  Wellington  and  Lord  Stanley,  however,  opposed  the  idea 


FAMINE   FORCES  PEEL'S  HAND.  243 

of  opening  the  ports,  and  the  proposal  fell  through.  The 
Cabinet  merely  resolved  on  appointing  a  commission,  con- 
sisting of  the  heads  of  departments  in  Ireland,  to  take  some 
steps  to  guard  against  a  sudden  outbreak  of  famine,  and  the 
thought  of  an  autumnal  session  was  abandoned.  Sir  Robert 
Peel  himself  has  thus  tersely  described  the  manner  in  which 
his  proposals  were  received:  "The  cabinet  by  a  very  con- 
siderable majority  declined  giving  its  assent  to  the  proposals 
which  I  thus  made  to  them.  They  were  supported  by  only 
three  members  of  the  cabinet  —  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  Sir 
James  Graham,  and  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert.  The  other  mem- 
bers of  the  cabinet,  some  on  the  ground  of  objection  to  the 
principle  of  the  measures  recommended,  others  upon  the 
ground  that  there  was  not  yet  sufficient  evidence  of  the 
necessity  for  them,  withheld  their  sanction." 

The  great  cry  all  through  Ireland  was  for  the  opening  of 
the  ports.  The  Mansion  House  Relief  Committee  of  Dublin 
issued  a  series  of  resolutions  declaring  their  conviction,  from 
the  most  undeniable  evidence,  that  considerably  more  than 
one-third  of  the  entire  potato  crop  in  Ireland  had  been  al- 
ready destroyed  by  the  disease,  and  that  the  disease  had  not 
ceased  its  ravages,  but  on  the  contrary  was  daily  expanding 
more  and  more.  "  No  reasonable  conjecture  can  be  formed," 
the  resolutions  went  on  to  state,  "  with  respect  to  the  limit 
of  its  effects  short  of  the  destruction  of  the  entire  remaining 
crop ;"  and  the  document  concluded  with  a  denunciation  of 
the  ministry  for  not  opening  the  ports  or  calling  Parliament 
together  before  the  usual  time  for  its  assembling. 

Two  or  three  days  after  the  issue  of  these  resolutions  Lord 
John  Russell  wrote  a  letter  from  Edinburgh  to  his  constitu- 
ents, the  electors  of  the  City  of  London — a  letter  which  is 
one  of  the  historical  documents  of  the  reign.  It  announced 
his  unqualified  conversion  to  the  principles  of  the  Anti-Corn- 
law  League.  The  failure  of  the  potato  crop  was,  of  com*se, 
the  immediate  occasion  of  this  letter.  "  Indecision  and  pro- 
crastination," Lord  John  Russell  wrote,  "  may  produce  a 

state  of  suffering  which  it  is  frightful  to  contemplate 

It  is  no  longer  worth  while  to  contend  for  a  fixed  duty.  In 
1841  the  Free-trade  party  would  have  agreed  to  a  duty  of 
8s.  per  quarter  on  wheat,  and  after  a  lapse  of  years  this  duty 
might  have  been  further  reduced,  and  ultimately  abolished. 


244  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

But  the  imposition  of  any  duty  at  present,  without  a  provi- 
sion for  its  extinction  within  a  short  period,  would  but  pro- 
long a  contest  already  sufficiently  fruitful  of  animosity  and 
discontent."  Lord  John  Russell  then  invited  a  general  un- 
derstanding, to  put  an  end  to  a  system  "  which  has  been 
proved  to  be  the  blight  of  commerce,  the  bane  of  agricult- 
ure, the  source  of  bitter  division  among  classes,  the  cause  of 
penury, fever,  mortality,  and  crime  among  the  people."  Then 
the  writer  added  a  significant  remark  to  the  effect  that  the 
Government  appeared  to  be  waiting  for  some  excuse  to  give 
up  the  present  Corn-law,  and  urging  the  people  to  afford 
them  all  the  excuse  they  could  desire,  "  by  petition,  by  ad- 
dress, by  remonstrance." 

Peel  himself  has  told  us  in  his  Memoirs  what  was  the  ef- 
fect which  this  letter  produced  upon  his  own  councils.  It 
"could  not,"  he  points  out,  "fail  to  exercise  a  very  material 
influence  on  the  public  mind,  and  on  the  subject-matter  of 
our  deliberations  in  the  cabinet.  It  justified  the  conclusion 
that  the  Whig  party  was  prepared  to  unite  with  the  Anti- 
Corn-law  League  in  demanding  the  total  repeal  of  the  Corn- 
laws."  Peel  would  not  consent  now  to  propose  simply  an 
opening  of  the  ports.  It  would  seem,  he  thought,  a  mere 
submission,  to  accept  the  minimum  of  the  terms  ordered  by 
the  Whig  leader.  That  would  have  been  well  enough  when 

o  o 

he  first  recommended  it  to  his  cabinet;  and  if  it  could  then 
have  been  offered  to  the  country  as  the  spontaneous  move- 
ment of  a  united  ministry,  it  would  have  been  becoming  of 
the  emergency  and  of  the  men.  But  to  do  this  no\v  would 
be  futile ;  would  seem  like  trifling  with  the  question.  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  therefore,  recommended  to  his  cabinet  an  early 
meeting  of  Parliament  with  the  view  of  bringing  forward 
some  measure  equivalent  to  a  speedy  repeal  of  the  Corn- 
laws. 

The  recommendation  was  wise :  it  was,  indeed,  indispen- 
sable. Yet  it  is  hard  to  think  that  an  impartial  posterity 
will  form  a  very  lofty  estimate  of  the  wisdom  with  which 
the  counsels  of  the  two  great  English  parties  were  guided 
in  this  momentous  emergency.  Neither  Whigs  nor  Tories 
appear  to  have  formed  a  judgment  because  of  facts  or  prin- 
ciples, but  only  in  deference  to  the  political  necessities  of 
the  hour.  Sir  Robert  Peel  himself  denied  that  it  was  the 


FAMINE   FORCES   PEEL'S  HAND.  245 

resistless  hand  of  famine  in  Ireland  which  had  brought  him 
to  his  resolve  that  the  Corn -laws  ought  to  be  abolished. 
He  grew  into  the  conviction  that  they  were  bad  in  principle. 
Lord  John  Russell  had  long  been  growing  into  the  same 
conviction.  Yet  the  League  had  been  left  to  divide  with 
but  small  numbers  against  overwhelming  majorities  made 
up  of  both  parties,  until  the  very  session  before  Peel  pro- 
posed to  repeal  the  Corn-laws.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  indeed, 
indulges  in  something  like  exaggeration  when  he  says,  in 
his  "  Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,"  that  the  close  of  the 
session  of  1845  found  the  League  nearly  reduced  to  silence. 
But  it  is  not  untrue  that,  as  he  says, "  the  Manchester  con- 
federates seemed  to  be  least  in  favor  with  Parliament  and 
the  country  on  the  very  eve  of  their  triumph."  "  They  lost 
at  the  same  time  elections  and  the  ear  of  the  House ;  and 
the  cause  of  total  and  immediate  repeal  seemed  in  a  not  less 
hopeless  position  than  when,  under  circumstances  of  infinite 
difficulty,  it  was  first  and  solely  upheld  by  the  terse  elo- 
quence and  vivid  perception  of  Charles  Villiers."  Lord 
Beaconsfield  certainly  ought  to  know  what  cause  had  and 
what  had  not  the  ear  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  that 
time ;  and  yet  we  venture  to  doubt,  even  after  his  assurance, 
whether  the  League  and  its  speakers  had  in  any  way  found 
their  hold  on  the  attention  of  Parliament  diminishing.  But 
the  loss  of  elections  is  beyond  dispute.  It  is  a  fact  alluded 
to  in  the  very  letter  from  Lord  John  Russell  which  was  cre- 
ating so  much  commotion.  "  It  is  not  to  be  denied,"  Lord 
John  Russell  writes,  "  that  many  elections  for  cities  and 
towns  in  1841,  and  some  in  1845,  appear  to  favor  the  asser- 
tion that  Free-trade  is  not  popular  with  the  great  mass  of 
the  community."  This  is,  from  whatever  cause,  a  very  com- 
mon phenomenon  in  our  political  history.  A  movement 
which  began  with  the  promise  of  sweeping  all  before  it 
seems  after  awhile  to  lose  its  force,  and  is  supposed  by  many 
observers  to  be  now  only  the  work  and  the  care  of  a  few 
earnest  and  fanatical  men.  Suddenly  it  is  taken  up  by  a 
minister  of  commanding  influence,  and  the  bore  or  the 
crotchet  of  one  Parliament  is  the  great  party  controversy 
of  a  second,  and  the  accomplished  triumph  of  a  third.  In 
this  instance  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  the  League  seemed  to 
be  somewhat  losing  in  strength  and  influence  just  on  the  eve 


246  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

of  its  complete  triumph.  He  must,  indeed,  be  the  very  op- 
timist of  Parliamentary  government  who  upholds  the  man- 
ner of  Free-trade's  final  adoption  as  absolutely  satisfactory, 
and  as  reflecting  nothing  but  credit  upon  the  counsels  of 
our  two  great  political  parties.  Such  a  well-contented  per- 
sonage might  be  fairly  asked  to  explain  why  a  system  of 
protective  taxation,  beginning  to  be  regarded  by  all  thought- 
ful statesmen  as  bad  in  itself,  should  never  be  examined 
with  a  view  to  its  repeal  until  the  force  of  a  great  emer- 
gency and  the  rival  biddings  of  party  leaders  came  to  render 
its  repeal  inevitable.  The  Corn-laws,  as  all  the  world  now 
admits,  were  a  cruel  burden  to  the  poor  and  the  working- 
class  of  England.  They  were  justly  described  by  Lord  John 
Russell  as  "  the  blight  of  commerce,  the  bane  of  agriculture, 
the  source  of  bitter  division  among  classes;  the  cause  of 
penury,  fever,  mortality,  and  crime  among  the  people."  All 
this  was  independent  of  the  sudden  and  ephemeral  calamity 
of  the  potato  rot,  which  at  the  time  when  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell wrote  that  letter  did  not  threaten  to  become  nearly  so 
fatal  as  it  afterward  proved  to  be.  One  cannot  help  asking 
how  long  would  the  Corn-laws  have  been  suffered  thus  to 
blight  commerce  and  agriculture,  to  cau?e  division  among 
classes,  and  to  produce  penury,  mortality,  and  crime  among 
the  people,  if  the  potato  rot  in  Ireland  had  not  rendered  it 
necessary  to  do  something  without  delay  ? 

The  potato  rot,  however,  inspired  the  writing  of  Lord 
John  Russell's  letter;  and  Lord  John  Russell's  letter  in- 
spired Sir  Robert  Peel  with  the  conviction  that  something 
must  be  done.  Most  of  his  colleagues  were  inclined  to  go 
with  him  this  time.  A  cabinet  council  was  held  on  No- 
vember 25th,  almost  immediately  after  the  publication  of 
Lord  John  Russell's  letter.  At  that  council  Sir  Robert  Peel 
recommended  the  summoning  of  Parliament  with  a  view  to 
instant  measures  to  combat  the  famine  in  Ireland,  but  with 
a  view  also  to  some  announcement  of  legislation  intended  to 
pave  the  way  for  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws.  Lord  Stan- 
ley still  hesitated,  and  asked  time  to  consider  his  decision. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  unchanged  in  his  private  opin- 
ion that  the  Corn-laws  ought  to  be  maintained;  but  he  de- 
clared with  a  blunt  simplicity  that  his  only  object  in  public 
life  was  "  to  support  Sir  Robert  Peel's  administration  of  the 


FAMINE   FORCES  PEEL'S  HAND.  247 

Government  for  the  Queen."  "A  good  government  for  the 
country,"  said  the  sturdy  and  simple  old  hero,  "is  more  im- 
portant than  Corn-laws  or  any  other  consideration."  One 
may  smile  at  this  notion  of  a  good  government  without  ref- 
erence to  the  quality  of  the  legislation  it  introduces;  it  re- 
minds one  a  little  of  the  celebrated  study  of  history  with- 
out reference  to  time  or  place.  But  the  Duke  acted  strictly 
up  to  his  principles  of  duty,  and  he  declared  that  if  Sir  Rob- 
ert Peel  considered  the  repeal  of  the  Corn -laws  to  be  not 
right  or  necessary  for  the  welfare  of  England,  but  requisite 
for  the  maintenance  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  position  "in  Par- 
liament and  in  the  public  view,"  he  should  thoroughly  sup- 
port the  proposal.  Lord  Stanley,  however,  was  not  to  be 
changed  in  the  end.  He  took  time  to  consider,  and  seems 
really  to  have  tried  his  best  to  persuade  himself  that  he 
could  fall  in  with  the  new  position  which  the  Premier  had 
assumed.  Meanwhile  the  most  excited  condition  of  public 
feeling  prevailed  throughout  London  and  the  country  gen- 
erally. The  Times  newspaper  came  out  on  December  4th 
with  the  announcement  that  the  ministry  had  made  up  its 
mind,  and  that  the  Royal  speech  at  the  commencement  of 
the  session  would  recommend  an  immediate  consideration 
of  the  Corn-laws  preparatory  to  their  total  repeal.  It  would 
be  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate  the  excitement  caused  by 
this  startling  piece  of  news.  It  was  indignantly  and  in 
unqualified  terms  declared  a  falsehood  by  the  ministerial 
prints.  Long  arguments  were  gone  into  to  prove  that  even 
if  the  fact  announced  were  true,  it  could  not  possibly  have 
been  known  to  the  Times.  In  Disraeli's  "  Coningsby  "  Mr. 
Rigby  gives  the  clearest  and  most  convincing  reasons  to 
prove,  first,  that  Lord  Spencer  could  not  be  dead,  as  report 
said  he  was  ;  and  next,  that  even  if  he  were  dead,  the  fact 
could  not  possibly  be  known  to  those  who  took  on  them- 
selves to  announce  it.  He  is  hardly  silenced  even  by  the 
assurance  of  a  great  duke  that  he  is  one  of  Lord  Spencer's 
executors,  and  that  Lord  Spencer  is  certainly  dead.  So  the 
announcement  in  the  Times  was  fiercely  and  pedantically 
argued  against.  "  It  can't  be  true  ;"  "  the  Times  could  not 
get  to  know  of  it ;"  "  it  must  be  a  cabinet  secret  if  it  were 
true ;"  "  nobody  outside  the  cabinet  could  possibly  know  of 
it;"  "if  any  one  outside  the  cabinet  could  get  to  know  of 


248  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

it,  it  would  not  be  the  Times;'1''  it  would  be  this,  that,  or  the 
other  person  or  journal ;  and  so  forth.  Long  after  it  had 
been  made  certain,  beyond  even  Mr.  Rigby's  power  of  dis- 
putation, that  the  announcement  was  true  so  far  as  the  re- 
solve of  the  Prime -minister  was  concerned,  people  contin- 
ued to  argue  and  controvert  as  to  the  manner  in  which  the 
Times  became  possessed  of  the  secret.  The  general  conclu- 
sion come  to  among  the  knowing  was  that  the  blandish- 
ments of  a  gifted  and  beautiful  lady  with  a  dash  of  polit- 
ical intrigue  in  her  had  somehow  extorted  the  secret  from 
a  young  and  handsome  member  of  the  cabinet,  and  that 
she  had  communicated  it  to  the  Times.  It  is  not  impossible 
that  this  may  have  been  the  true  explanation.  It  was  be- 
lieved in  by  a  great  many  persons  who  might  have  been 
in  a  position  to  judge  of  the  probabilities.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  were  surely  signs  and  tokens  enough  by  which 
a  shrewd  politician  might  have  guessed  what  was  to  come 
without  any  intervention  of  petticoat  diplomacy.  It  seems 
odd  now  that  people  should  then  have  distressed  themselves 
so  much  by  conjectures  as  to  the  source  of  the  information 
when  once  it  was  made  certain  that  the  information  itself 
was  substantially  true.  This  it  undoubtedly  was,  although 
it  did  not  tell  all  the  truth,  and  could  not  foretell.  For 
there  was  an  ordeal  yet  to  be  gone  through  before  the 
Prime-minister  could  put  his  plans  into  operation.  On  De- 
cember 4th  the  Times  made  the  announcement.  On  the  6th, 
having  been  passionately  contradicted,  it  repeated  the  as- 
sertion. "We  adhere  to  our  original  announcement  that 
Parliament  will  meet  early  in  January,  and  that  a  repeal 
of  the  Corn-laws  will  be  proposed  in  one  House  by  Sir  R. 
Peel,  and  in  the  other  by  the  Duke  of  Wellington."  But, 
in  the  mean  time,  the  opposition  in  the  cabinet  had  proved 
itself  unmanageable.  Lord  Stanley  and  the  Duke  of  Buc- 
cleuch  intimated  to  the  Prime-minister  that  they  could  not 
be  parties  to  any  measure  involving  the  ultimate  repeal  of 
the  Corn  -  laws.  Sir  Robert  Peel  did  not  believe  that  he 
could  carry  out  his  project  satisfactorily  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, and  he  therefore  hastened  to  tender  his  resig- 
nation to  the  Queen.  "  The  other  members  of  the  cabinet, 
without  exception,  I  believe  " — these  are  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
own  words — "  concurred  in  this  opinion  ;  and  under  these 


FAMINE   FORCES   PEEL'S   HAND.  249 

circumstances  I  consider  it  to  be  my  duty  to  tender  my 
resignation  to  her  Majesty.  On  the  5th  of  December  I  re- 
paired to  Osborne,  Isle  of  Wight,  and  humbly  solicited  her 
Majesty  to  relieve  me  from  duties  which  I  felt  I  could  no 
longer  discharge  with  advantage  to  her  Majesty's  service." 
The  very  day  after  the  Times  made  its  famous  announce- 
ment, the  very  day  before  the  Times  repeated  it,  the  Prime- 
minister  who  was  to  propose  the  repeal  of  the  Corn -laws 
went  out  of  office. 

Quern  dixere  chaos!  Apparently  chaos  had  come  again. 
Lord  John  Russell  was  sent  for  from  Edinburgh.  His  letter 
had,  without  any  such  purpose  on  his  part,  written  him  up 
as  the  man  to  take  Sir  Robert  Peel's  place.  Lord  John 
Russell  came  to  London,  and  did  his  best  to  cope  with  the 
many  difficulties  of  the  situation.  His  party  were  not  very 
strong  in  the  country,  and  they  had  not  a  majority  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  He  very  naturally  endeavored  to 
obtain  from  Peel  a  pledge  that  he  would  support  the  im- 
mediate and  complete  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws.  Peel,  writ- 
ing to  the  Queen,  "  humbly  expresses  his  regret  that  he 
does  not  feel  it  to  be  consistent  with  his  duty  to  enter  upon 
the  consideration  of  this  important  question  in  Parliament 
fettered  by  a  previous  engagement  of  the  nature  of  that 
required  of  hihf."  The  position  of  Lord  John  Russell  was 
awkward.  He  had  been  forced  into  it  because  one  or  two 
of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  colleagues  would  not  consent  to  adopt 
the  policy  of  their  chief.  But  the  very  fact  of  so  stubborn 
an  opposition  from  a  man  of  Lord  Stanley's  influence  showed 
clearly  enough  that  the  passing  of  Free-trade  measures  was 
not  to  be  effected  without  stern  resistance  from  the  country 
party.  The  whole  risk  and  burden  had  seemingly  been 
thrown  on  Lord  John  Russell ;  and  now  Sir  Robert  Peel 
would  not  even  pledge  himself  to  unconditional  support  of 
the  very  policy  which  was  understood  to  be  his  own.  Lord 
John  Russell  showed,  even  then,  his  characteristic  courage. 
He  resolved  to  form  a  ministry  without  a  Parliamentary 
majority.  He  was  not,  however,  fated  to  try  the  ordeal. 
Lord  Grey,  who  was  a  few  months  before  Lord  Howick,  and 
who  had  just  succeeded  to  the  title  of  his  father  (the  stately 
Charles  Earl  Grey,  the  pupil  of  Fox,  and  chief  of  the  cabinet 
which  passed  the  Reform  Bill  and  abolished  slavery) — Lord 

11* 


250  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Grey  felt  a  strong  objection  to  the  foreign  policy  of  Lord 
Palmerston,  and  these  two  could  not  get  on  in  one  ministry, 
as  it  was  part  of  Lord  John  Russell's  plan  that  they  should 
do.  Lord  Grey  also  was  strongly  of  opinion  that  a  seat  in 
the  cabinet  ought  to  be  offered  to  Mr.  Cobden ;  but  other 
great  Whigs  could  not  bring  themselves  to  any  larger  sacri- 
fice to  justice  and  common-sense  than  a  suggestion  that  the 
office  of  Vice  -  president  of  the  Board  of  Trade  should  be 
tendered  to  the  leader  of  the  Free  -  trade  movement.  Mr. 
Macaulay  describes  the  events  in  a  letter  to  the  Edinburgh 
Chamber  of  Commerce.  "All  our  plans  were  frustrated  by 
Lord  Grey,  who  objected  to  Lord  Palmerston  being  Foreign 
Secretary.  I  hope  that  the  public  interests  will  not  suffer. 
Sir  Robert  Peel  must  now  undertake  the  settlement  of  tbe 
question.  It  is  certain  that  he  can  settle  it.  It  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  we  could  have  done  so.  For  we  shall  to 
a  man  support  him ;  and  a  large  proportion  of  those  who 
are  now  in  office  would  have  refused  to  support  us."  One 
passage  in  Macaulay's  letter  will  be  read  with  peculiar  in- 
terest. "From  the  first,"  he  says,  "I  told  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell that  I.  stipulated  for  one  thing  only — total  and  immedi- 
ate repeal  of  the  Corn-laws;  that  my  objections  to  gradual 
abolition  were  insurmountable  ;  but  that  if  he  declared  for 
total  and  immediate  repeal  I  would  be  as  to  all  other  mat- 
ters absolutely  in  his  hands;  that  I  would  take  any  office, 
or  no  office, just  as  suited  him  best;  and  that  he  should 
never  be  disturbed  by  any  personal  pretensions  or  jealous- 
ies on  my  part."  No  one  can  doubt  Macaulay's  sincerity 
and  singleness  of  purpose.  But  it  is  surprising  to  note  the 
change  that  the  agitation  of  little  more  than  two  years  has 
made  in  his  opinions  on  the  subject  of  a  policy  of  immedi- 
ate and  unconditional  abolition.  In  February,  1843,  he  was 
pointing  out  to  the  electors  of  Edinburgh  the  unwisdom  of 
refusing  a  compromise,  and  in  December,  1845,  he  is  writing 
to  Edinburgh  to  say  that  the  one  only  thing  for  which  he 
must  stipulate  was  total  and  immediate  repeal.  The  Anti- 
Corn-law  League  might  well  be  satisfied  with  the  propagan- 
dist work  they  had  done.  The  League  itself  looked  on  very 
composedly  during  these  little  altercations  and  embarrass- 
ments of  pai'ties.  They  knew  well  enough  now  that  let  who 
would  take  power,  he  must  carry  out  their  policy.  At  a 


FAMINE   F011CES   PEEL'S   HAND.  251 

meeting  of  the  League,  which  was  held  in  Covent  Garden 
Theatre  on  the  17th  of  this  memorable  month,  and  while  the 
negotiations  were  still  going  on,  Mr.  Cobden  declared  that 
he  and  his  friends  had  not  striven  to  keep  one  party  in  or 
another  out  of  office.  "We  have  worked  with  but  one  prin- 
ciple and  one  object  in  view ;  and  if  we  maintain  that  prin- 
ciple for  but  six  months  more,  we  shall  attain  to  that  state 
which  I  have  so  long  and  so  anxiously  desired,  when  the 
League  shall  be  dissolved  into  its  primitive  elements  by  the 
triumph  of  its  principles." 

Lord  John  Russell  found  it  impossible  to  form  a  ministry. 
He  signified  his  failure  to  the  Queen.  Probably,  having 
done  the  best  he  could,  he  was  not  particularly  distressed  to 
find  that  his  efforts  were  ineffectual.  The  Queen  had  to 
send  for  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  Windsor,  and  tell  him  that  she 
must  require  him  to  withdraw  his  resignation  and  to  remain 
in  her  service.  Sir  Robert  of  course  could  only  comply. 
The  Queen  offered  to  give  him  some  time  to  enter  into  com- 
munication with  his  colleagues,  but  Sir  Robert  very  wisely 
thought  that  he  could  speak  with  much  greater  authority 
if  he  were  to  invite  them  to  support  him  in  an  effort  on 
which  he  was  determined,  and  which  he  had  positively  un- 
dertaken to  make.  He,  therefore,  returned  from  Windsor 
on  the  evening  of  December  20th,  "  having  resumed  all  the 
functions  of  First  Minister  of  the  Crown."  The  Duke  of 
Buccleuch  withdrew  his  opposition  to  the  policy  which  Peel 
was  now  to  carry  out ;  but  Lord  Stanley  remained  firm. 
The  place  of  the  latter  was  taken  as  Secretary  of  State 
for  the  Colonies  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  who,  however,  curiously 
enough  remained  without  a  seat  in  Parliament  during  the 
eventful  session  that  was  now  to  come.  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
sat  for  the  borough  of  Newark,  but  that  borough  being  un- 
der the  influence  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  who  had  with- 
drawn his  support  from  the  ministry,  he  did  not  invite  re- 
election, but  remained  without  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons for  some  months.  Sir  Robert  Peel  then,  to  use  his 
own  words  in  a  letter  to  the  Princess  de  Lieven,  resumed 
power  "  with  greater  means  of  rendering  public  service  than 
I  should  have  had  if  I  had  not  relinquished  it."  He  felt,  he 
said,  "  like  a  man  restored  to  life  after  his  funeral  service 
had  been  preached." 


252  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Parliament  was  summoned  to  meet  in  January.  In  the 
mean  time  it  was  easily  seen  how  the  Protectionists  and  the 
Tories  of  the  extreme  order  generally  would  regard  the  pro- 
posals of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  Protectionist  meetings  were  held 
in  various  parts  of  the  country,  and  they  were  all  but  unan- 
imous in  condemning  by  anticipation  the  policy  of  the  re- 
stored Premier.  Resolutions  were  passed  at  many  of 
these  meetings  expressing  an  equal  disbelief  in  the  Prime- 
minister  and  in  the  famine.  The  utmost  indignation  was 
expressed  at  the  idea  of  there  being  any  famine  in  prospect 
which  could  cause  any  departure  from  the  principles  which 
secured  to  the  farmers  a  certain  fixed  price  for  their  grain, 
or  at  least  prevented  the  price  from  falling  below  what  they 
considered  a  paying  amount.  Not  less  absurd  than  the  prot- 
estations that  there  would  be  no  famine  were  some  of  the 
remedies  which  were  suggested  for  it  if  it  should  insist  on 
coming  in.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk  of  that  time  made  himself 
particularly  conspicuous  by  a  beneficent  suggestion  which 
he  oifered  to  a  distressed  population.  He  went  about  rec- 
ommending a  curry  powder  of  his  own  device  as  a  charm 
against  hunger. 

Parliament  met.  The  opening  day  was  January  22d, 
1846.  The  Queen  in  person  opened  the  session,  and  the 
speech  from  the  throne  said  a  good  deal  about  the  condition 
of  Ireland  and  the  failure  of  the  potato  crop.  The  speech 
contained  one  significant  sentence.  "  I  have  had,"  her  Maj- 
esty was  made  to  say, "  great  satisfaction  in  giving  my  as- 
sent to  the  measures  which  you  have  presented  to  me  from 
time  to  time,  calculated  to  extend  commerce  and  to  stimu- 
late domestic  skill  and  industry,  by  the  repeal  of  prohibitive 
and  the  relaxation  of  protective  duties.  I  recommend  you 
to  take  into  your  early  consideration  whether  the  principle 
on  which  you  have  acted  may  not  with  advantage  be  yet 
more  extensively  applied."  Before  the  address  in  reply  to 
the  speech  from  the  throne  was  moved,  Sir  Robert  Peel  gave 
notice  of  the  intention  of  the  Government  on  the  earliest 
possible  day  to  submit  to  the  consideration  of  the  House 
measures  connected  with  the  commercial  and  financial  affairs 
of  the  country. 

There  are  few  scenes  more  animated  and  exciting  than 
that  presented  by  the  House  of  Commons  on  some  night 


FAMINE   FORCES   PEEL'S  HAND.  253 

when  a  great  debate  is  expected,  or  when  some  momentous 
announcement  is  to  be  made.  A  common  thrill  seems  to 
tremble  all  through  the  assembly,  as  a  breath  of  wind  runs 
across  the  sea.  The  House  appears  for  the  moment  to  be 
one  body,  pervaded  by  one  expectation.  The  ministerial 
benches,  the  front  benches  of  opposition,  are  occupied  by  the 
men  of  political  renown  and  of  historic  name.  The  bench- 
es everywhere  else  are  crowded  to  their  utmost  capacity. 
Members  who  cannot  get  seats — on  such  an  occasion  a  good- 
ly number — stand  below  the  bar  or  have  to  dispose  them- 
selves along  the  side  galleries.  The  celebrities  are  not  con- 
fined to  the  Treasury  benches  or  those  of  the  leaders  of  op- 
position. Here  and  there,  among  the  independent  members 
and  below  the  gangway  on  both  sides,  are  SCCMI  men  of  in- 
fluence and  renown.  At  the  opening  of  Parliament  in  1846 
this  was  especially  to  be  observed.  The  rising  fame  of  the 
Free-trade  leaders  made  them  almost  like  a  third  great  par- 
ty in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  strangers'  gallery,  the 
Speaker's  gallery,  on  such  a  night  are  crowded  to  excess. 
The  eye  surveys  the  whole  House  and  sees  no  vacant  place. 
In  the  very  hum  of  conversation  that  runs  along  the  benches 
there  is  a  tone  of  profound  anxiety.  The  minister  who  has 
to  face  that  House  and  make  the  announcement  for  which 
all  are  waiting  in  a  most  feverish  anxiety  is  a  man  to  be  en- 
vied by  the  ambitious.  This  time  there  was  a  curiosity 
about  everything.  What  was  the  minister  about  to  an- 
nounce? When  and  in  what  fashion  would  he  announce  it? 
Would  the  Whig  leaders  speak  before  the  ministerial  an- 
nouncement? Would  the  Free-traders?  What  voice  would 
first  hint  to  the  expectant  Commons  the  course  which  polit- 
ical events  were  destined  to  take?  The  moving  of  an  ad- 
dress to  the  throne  is  always  a  formal  piece  of  business.  It 
would  be  hardly  possible  for  Cicero  or  Burke  to  be  very  in- 
teresting when  performing  such  a  task.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  an  excellent  chance  for  a  young  beginner.  He  finds 
the  House  in  a  sort  of  contemptuously  indulgent  mood,  pre- 
pared to  welcome  the  slightest  evidence  of  any  capacity  of 
speech  above  the  dullest  mediocrity.  He  can  hardly  say 
anything  absurd  or  offensive  unless  he  goes  absolutely  out 
of  his  way  to  make  a  fool  of  himself ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
he  can  easily  say  his  little  nothings  in  a  graceful  way,  and 


254  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMEri. 

receive  grateful  applause,  accordingly,  from  an  assembly 
which  counts  on  being  bored,  and  feels  doubly  indebted  to 
the  speaker  who  is  even  in  the  slightest  degree  an  agree- 
able disappointment.  On  this  particular  occasion,  however, 
the  duty  of  the  proposer  and  seconder  of  the  address  was 
made  specially  trying  by  the  fact  that  they  had  to  interfere 
with  merely  formal  utterances  between  an  eager  House  and 
an  exciting  announcement.  A  certain  piquancy  was  lent, 
however,  to  the  performance  of  the  duty  by  the  fact,  which 
the  speeches  made  evident  beyond  the  possibility  of  mis- 
take, that  the  proposer  of  the  address  knew  quite  well  what 
the  Government  were  about  to  do,  and  that  the  seconder 
knew  nothing  whatever. 

Now  the  formal  task  is  done.  The  address  has  been  moved 
and  seconded.  The  Speaker  puts  the  question  that  the  ad- 
dress be  adopted.  Now  is  the  time  for  debate,  if  debate 
there  is  to  be.  On  such  occasions  there  is  always  some  dis- 
cussion, but  it  is  commonly  as  mere  a  piece  of  formality  as 
the  address  itself.  It  is  understood  that  the  leader  of  op- 
position will  say  something  meaning  next  to  nothing ;  that 
two  or  three  men  will  grumble  vaguely  at  the  ministry; 
that  the  leader  of  the  House  will  reply ;  and  then  the  affair 
is  all  over.  But  on  this  occasion  it  was  certain  that  some 
momentous  announcement  would  have  to  be  made ;  and  the 
question  was  when  it  would  come.  Perhaps  no  one  expect- 
ed exactly  what  did  happen.  Nothing  can  be  more  unusual 
than  for  the  leader  of  the  House  to  open  the  debate  on  such 
an  occasion ;  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  usually  somewhat  of 
a  formalist,  who  kept  to  the  regular  ways  in  all  that  per- 
tained to  the  business  of  the  House.  No  eyes  of  expecta- 
tion were  turned,  therefore,  to  the  ministerial  bench  at  the 
moment  after  the  formal  putting  of  the  question  by  the 
Speaker.  It  was  rather  expected  that  Lord  John  Russell,  or 
perhaps  Mr.  Cobden,  would  rise.  But  a  surprised  murmur 
running  through  all  parts  of  the  House  soon  told  those  who 
could  not  see  the  Treasury  bench  t'hat  something  unusual 
had  happened ;  and  in  a  moment  the  voice  of  the  Prime-minis- 
ter was  heard — that  marvellous  voice  of  which  Lord  Beacons- 
field  says  that  it  had  not  in  his  time  any  equal  in  the  House, 
"  unless  we  except  the  thrilling  tones  of  O'Connell " — and  it 
was  known  that  the  great  explanation  was  coming  at  once. 


FAMINE   FORCES   PEEL/S   HAND.  255 

The  explanation  even  now,  however,  was  somewhat  de- 
ferred. The  Prime-minister  showed  a  deliberate  intention, 
it  might  have  been  thought,  not  to  come  to  the  point  at 
once.  He  went  into  long  and  labored  explanations  of  the 
manner  in  which  his  mind  had  been  brought  into  a  change 
on  the  subject  of  Free-trade  and  Protection ;  and  he  gave 
exhaustive  calculations  to  show  that  the  reduction  of  duty 
was  constantly  followed  by  expansion  of  the  revenue,  and 
even  a  maintenance  of  high  prices.  The  duties  on  glass,  the 
duties  on  flax,  the  prices  of  salt  pork  and  domestic  lard,  the 
contract  price  of  salt  beef  for  the  navy — these  and  many 
other  such  topics  were  discussed  at  great  length  and  with 
elaborate  fulness  of  detail  in  the  hearing  of  an  eager  House 
anxious  only,  for  that  night,  to  know  whether  or  not  the 
minister  meant  to  introduce  the  principle  of  Free -trade. 
Peel,  however,  made  it  clear  enough  that  he  had  become  a 
complete  convert  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Manchester  school, 
and  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  time  had  come  when  that  pro- 
tection which  he  had  taken  office  to  maintain  must  forever 
be  abandoned.  One  sentence  at  the  close  of  his  speech  was 
made  the  occasion  of  much  labored  criticism  and  some  se- 
vere accusation.  It  was  that  in  which  Peel  declared  that  he 
found  it  "  no  easy  task  to  insure  the  harmonious  and  united 
action  of  an  ancient  monarchy,  a  proud  aristocracy,  and  a 
reformed  House  of  Commons." 

The  explanation  was  over.  The  House  of  Commons  were 
left  rather  to  infer  than  to  understand  what  the  Government 
proposed  to  do.  Lord  John  Russell  entered  into  some  per- 
sonal explanations  relating  to  his  endeavor  to  form  a  min- 
istry, and  the  causes  of  its  failure.  These  have  not  much 
interest  for  a  later  time.  It  might  have  seemed  that  the 
work  of  the  night  was  done.  It  was  evident  that  the  min- 
isterial policy  could  not  be  discussed  then  ;  for, in  fact,  it  had 
not  been  announced.  The  House  knew  that  the  Prime-min- 
ister was  a  convert  to  the  principles  of  Free-trade ;  but  that 
was  all  that  any  one  could  be  said  to  know  except  those 
who  were  in  the  secrets  of  the  cabinet.  There  appeared, 
therefore,  nothing  for  it  but  to  wait  until  the  time  should 
come  for  the  formal  announcement  and  the  full  discussion 
of  the  Government  measures.  Suddenly,  however,  a  new 
and  striking  figure  intervened  in  the  languishing  debate, 


256  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

and  filled  the  House  of  Commons  with  a  fresh  life.  There 
is  not  often  to  be  found  in  our  Parliamentary  history  an  ex- 
ample like  this  of  a  sudden  turn  given  to  a  whole  career  by 
a  timely  speech.  The  member  who  rose  to  comment  on  the 
explanation  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  been  for  many  years  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  This  was  his  tenth  session.  He 
had  spoken  often  in  each  session.  He  had  made  many  bold 
attempts  to  win  a  name  in  Parliament,  and  hitherto  his 
political  career  had  been  simply  a  failure.  From  the  hour 
when  he  spoke  this  speech  it  was  one  long,  unbroken,  brill- 
iant success. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

MR.  DISRAELI. 

THE  speaker  who  rose  into  such  sudden  prominence  and 
something  like  the  position  of  a  party  leader  was  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  men  the  politics  of  the  reign  have  pro- 
duced. Perhaps,  if  the  word  remarkable  were  to  be  used 
in  its  most  strict  sense,  and  without  particular  reference  to 
praise,  it  would  be  just  to  describe  him  as  emphatically  the 
most  remarkable  man  that  the  political  controversies  of  the 
present  reign  have  called  into  power.  Mr.  Disraeli  entered 
the  House  of  Commons  as  Conservative  member  for  Maid- 
stone  in  1837.  He  was  then  about  thirty-two  years  of  age. 
He  had  previously  made  repeated  and  unsuccessful  attempts 
to  get  a  seat  in  Parliament.  He  began  his  political  career 
as  an  advanced  Liberal,  and  had  come  out  under  the  auspices 
of  Daniel  O'Connell  and  Joseph  Hume.  He  had  described 
himself  as  one  who  desired  to  fight  the  battle  of  the  people, 
and  who  was  supported  by  neither  of  the  aristocratic  parties. 
He  failed  again  and  again,  and  apparently  he  began  to  think 
that  it  would  be  a  wiser  thing  to  look  for  the  support  of 
one  or  other  of  the  aristocratic  parties.  He  had  before  this 
given  indications  of  remarkable  literary  talent,  if  indeed  it 
might  not  be  called  genius.  His  novel,  "Vivian  Grey," 
published  when  he  was  in  his  twenty-third  year,  was  suffused 
with  extravagance,  affectation,  and  mere  animal  spirits  ;  but 
it  was  full  of  the  evidences  of  a  fresh  and  brilliant  ability. 
The  son  of  a  distinguished  literary  man,  Mr.  Disraeli  had 


MR.  DISRAELI.  257 

probably  at  that  time  only  a  young  literary  man's  notions 
of  politics.  It  is  not  necessary  to  charge  him  with  deliber- 
ate inconsistency  because  from  having  been  a  Radical  of  the 
most  advanced  views  he  became  by  an  easy  leap  a  romantic 
Tory.  It  is  not  likely  that  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  he 
had  any  very  clear  ideas  in  connection  with  the  words  Tory 
or  Radical. "  He  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  W.  J.  Fox,  already 
described  as  an  eminent  Unitarian  minister  and  rising  poli- 
tician, in  which  he  declared  that  his  forte  was  sedition. 
Most  clever  young  men  who  are  not  born  to  fortune,  and 
who  feel  drawn  into  political  life,  fancy  too  that  their  forte 
is  sedition.  When  young  Disraeli  found  that  sedition  and 
even  advanced  Radicalism  did  not  do  much  to  get  him  into 
Parliament,  he  probably  began  to  ask  himself  whether  his 
Liberal  convictions  were  so  deeply  rooted  as  to  call  for  the 
sacrifice  of  a  career.  He  thought  the  question  over,  and 
doubtless  found  himself  crystallizing  fast  into  an  advocate 
of  the  established  order  of  things.  In  a  purely  personal 
light  this  was  a  fortunate  conclusion  for  the  ambitious  young 
politician.  He  could  not  then  have  anticipated  the  extraor- 
dinary change  which  was  to  be  wrought  in  the  destiny  and 
the  composition  of  the  Tory  party  by  the  eloquence,  the 
arguments,  and  the  influence  of  two  men  who  at  that  time 
were  almost  absolutely  unknown.  Mr.  Cobden  stood  for  the 
first  time  as  a  candidate  for  a  seat  in  Parliament  in  the  year 
that  saw  Mr.  Disraeli  elected  for  the  first  time,  and  Mr.  Cob- 
den  was  unsuccessful.  Cobden  had  to  wait  four  years  before 
he  found  his  way  into  the  House  of  Commons ;  Bright  did 
not  become  a  member  of  Parliament  until  some  two  years 
later  still.  It  was,  however,  the  Anti-Corn-law  agitation 
which,  by  conquering  Peel  and  making  him  its  advocate, 
brought  about  the  memorable  split  in  the  Conservative 
party,  and  carried  away  from  the  cause  of  the  country 
squires  nearly  all  the  men  of  talent  who  had  hitherto  been 
with  them.  A  new  or  middle  party  of  so-called  Peelites 
was  formed.  Graham,  Gladstone,  Sidney  Herbert,  Cardwell, 
and  other  men  of  equal  mark  or  promise,  joined  it,  and  the 
country  party  was  left  to  seek  for  leadership  in  the  earnest 
spirit  and  very  moderate  talents  of  Lord  George  Bentinck. 
Mr.  Disraeli  then  found  his  chance.  His  genius  was  such 
that  it  must  have  made  a  way  for  him  anywhere  and  in 


258  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

spite  of  any  competition  ;  but  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that 
his  career  of  political  advancement  might  have  been  very 
different  if,  in  place  of  finding  himself  the  only  man  of  first- 
class  ability  in  the  party  to  which  he  had  attached  himself, 
he  had  been  a  member  of  a  party  which  had  Palinerston  and 
Russell  and  Gladstone  and  Graham  for  its  captains,  and 
Cobden  and  Bright  for  its  habitual  supporters. 

This,  however,  could  not  have  been  in  Mr.  Disraeli's 
thoughts  when  he  changed  from  Radicalism  to  Conserva- 
tism. No  trace  of  the  progress  of  conversion  can  be  found 
in  his  speeches  or  his  writings.  It  is  not  unreasonable  to 
infer  that  he  took  up  Radicalism  at  the  beginning  because 
it  looked  the  most  picturesque  and  romantic  thing  to  do, 
and  that  only  as  he  found  it  fail  to  answer  his  personal  ob- 
ject did  it  occur  to  him  that  he  had,  after  all,  more  affinity 
with  the  cause  of  the  country  gentlemen.  The  reputation 
he  had  made  for  himself  before  his  going  into  Parliament 
was  of  a  nature  rather  calculated  to  retard  than  to  advance 
a  political  career.  He  was  looked  upon  almost  universal- 
ly as  an  eccentric  and  audacious  adventurer,  who  was  kept 
from  being  dangerous  by  the  affectations  and  absurdities  of 
his  conduct.  He  dressed  in  the  extremest  style  of  prepos- 
terous foppery;  he  talked  a  blending  of  cynicism  and  senti- 
ment ;  he  had  made  the  most  reckless  statements ;  his  boast- 
ing was  almost  outrageous ;  his  rhetoric  of  abuse  was,  even 
in  that  free-spoken  time,  astonishingly  vigorous  and  unre- 
strained. Even  his  literary  efforts  did  not  then  receive  any- 
thing like  the  appreciation  they  have  obtained  since.  At 
that  time  they  were  regarded  rather  as  audacious  whimsi- 
calities, the  fantastic  freaks  of  a  clever  youth,  than  as  genu- 
ine works  of  a  certain  kind  of  art.  Even  when  he  did  get 
into  the  Plouse  of  Commons,  his  first  experience  there  was 
little  calculated  to  give  him  much  hope  of  success.  Reading 
over  this  first  speech  now,  it  seems  hard  to  understand  why 
it  should  have  excited  so  much  laughter  and  derision ;  why 
it  should  have  called  forth  nothing  but  laughter  and  deri- 
sion. It  is  a  clever  speech,  full  of  point  and  odd  conceits; 
very  like  in  style  and  structure  many  of  the  speeches  which 
in  later  years  won  for  the  same  orator  the  applause  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  But  Mr.  Disraeli's  reputation  had  pre- 
ceded him  into  the  House.  Up  to  this  time  his  life  had  been, 


MR.  DISRAELI.  259 

says  an  unfriendly  but  not  an  unjust  critic,  "an  almost  un- 
interrupted career  of  follies  and  defeats."  The  House  was 
probably  in  a  humor  to  find  the  speech  ridiculous  because 
the  general  impression  was  that  the  man  himself  was  ridicu- 
lous. Mr.  Disraeli's  appearance,  too,  no  doubt,  contributed 
something  to  the  contemptuous  opinion  which  was  formed 
of  him  on  his  first  attempt  to  address  the  assembly  which 
he  afterward  came  to  rule.  He  is  described  by  an  observer 
as  having  been  attired  "in  a  bottle-green  frock-coat  and  a 
waistcoat  of  white,  of  the  Dick  Swiveller  pattern,  the  front 
of  which  exhibited  a  net-work  of  glittering  chains ;  large 
fancy-pattern  pantaloons,  and  a  black  tie,  above  which  no 
shirt -collar  was  visible,  completed  the  outward  man.  A 
countenance  lividly  pale,  set  out  by  a  pair  of  intensely  black 
eyes,  and  a  broad  but  not  very  high  forehead,  overhung  by 
clustering  ringlets  of  coal-black  hair,  which,  combed  away 
from  the  right  temple,  fell  in  bunches  of  well-oiled  small 
ringlets  over  his  left  cheek."  His  manner  was  intensely  the- 
atric ;  his  gestures  were  wild  and  extravagant.  In  all  this 
there  is  not  much,  however,  to  surprise  those  who  knew  Mr. 
Disraeli  in  his  greater  days.  His  style  was  always  extrava- 
gant; his  rhetoric  constantly  degenerated  into  vulgarity; 
his  whole  manner  was  that  of  the  typical  foreigner  whom 
English  people  regard  as  the  illustration  of  all  that  is  ve- 
hement and  unquiet.  But  whatever  the  cause,  it  is  certain 
that  on  the  occasion  of  his  first  attempt  Mr.  Disraeli  made 
not  merely  a  failure,  but  even  a  ludicrous  failure.  One  who 
heard  the  debate  thus  describes  the  manner  in  which,  baffled 
by  the  persistent  laughter  and  other  interruptions  of  the 
noisy  House,  the  orator  withdrew  from  the  discussion,  de- 
feated but  not  discouraged.  "At  last,  losing  his  temper, 
which  until  now  he  had  preserved  in  a  wonderful  manner, 
he  paused  in  the  midst  of  a  sentence,  and  looking  the  Liber- 
als indignantly  in  the  face,  raised  his  hands,  and,  opening  his 
mouth  as  widely  as  its  dimensions  would  admit,  said,  in  a  re- 
markably loud  and  almost  terrific  tone, '  I  have  begun,  sev- 
eral times, many  things, and  I  have  often  succeeded  at  last; 
ay,  sir,  and  though  I  sit  down  now,  the  time  will  come  when 
you  will  hear  me.'"  This  final  prediction  is  so  like  what  a 
manufacturer  of  biography  would  make  up  for  a  hero,  and  is 
so  like  what  was  actually  said  in  one  or  two  other  remarka- 


260  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ble  instances,  that  a  reader  might  be  excused  for  doubting 
its  authenticity  in  this  case.  But  nothing  can  be  more  cer- 
tain than  the  fact  that  Mr.  Disraeli  did  bring  to  a  close  his 
maiden  speech  in  the  House  of  Commons  with  this  bold  pre- 
diction. The  words  are  to  be  found  in  the  reports  published 
next  morning  in  all  the  daily  papers  of  the  metropolis. 

It  was  thus  that  Mr.  Disraeli  began  his  career  as  a  Parlia- 
mentary orator.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  on  that  occasion 
almost  the  only  one  of  his  hearers  who  seems  to  have  ad- 
mired the  speech  was  Sir  Robert  Peel.  It  is  by  his  philip- 
pic against  Peel  that  Disraeli  is  now  about  to  convince  the 
House  of  Commons  that  the  man  they  laughed  at  before  is 
a  great  Parliamentary  orator. 

Disraeli  was  not  in  the  least  discouraged  by  his  first  fail- 
ure. A  few  days  after  it  he  spoke  again,  and  he  spoke  three 
or  four  times  more  during  his  first  session.  But  he  had 
learned  some  wisdom  by  rough  experience,  and  he  did  not 
make  his  oratorical  flights  so  long  or  so  ambitious  as  that 
first  attempt.  Then  he  seemed  after  awhile,  as  he  grew 
more  familiar  with  the  House,  to  go  in  for  being  paradoxi- 
cal; for  making  himself  always  conspicuous;  for  taking  up 
positions  and  expounding  political  creeds  which  other  men 
would  have  avoided.  It  is  very  difficult  to  get  any  clear 
idea  of  what  his  opinions  were  about  this  period  of  his  ca- 
reer, if  he  had  any  political  opinions  at  all.  Our  impression 
is  that  he  really  had  no  opinions  at  that  time ;  that  he  was 
only  in  quest  of  opinions.  He  spoke  on  subjects  of  which 
it  was  evident  that  he  knew  nothing,  and  sometimes  he  man- 
aged, by  the  sheer  force  of  a  strong  intelligence,  to  discern 
the  absurdity  of  economic  sophistries  which  had  baffled  men 
of  far  greater  experience,  and  which,  indeed,  to  judge  from 
his  personal  declarations  and  political  conduct  afterward,  he 
allowed  before  long  to  baffle  and  bewilder  himself.  More 
often,  however,  he  talked  with  a  grandiose  and  oracular 
vagueness  which  seemed  to  imply  that  he  alone  of  all  men 
saw  into  the  very  heart  of  the  question,  but  that  he  of  all 
men  must  not  yet  reveal  what  he  saw.  At  .his  best  of  times 
Mr.  Disraeli  was  an  example  of  that  class  of  being  whom 
Macaulay  declares  to  be  so  rare  that  Lord  Chatham  appears 
to  him  almost  a  solitary  illustration  of  it — "  a  great  man 
of  real  genius,  and  of  a  brave,  lofty,  and  commanding  spirit, 


MR.  DISRAELI.  261 

without  simplicity  of  character.11  What  Macaulay  goes  on 
to  say  of  Chatham  will  bear  quotation  too.  "  He  was  an 
actor  in  the  closet,  an  actor  at  council,  an  actor  in  Parlia- 
ment; and  even  in  private  society  he  could  not  lay  aside  his 
theatrical  tones  and  attitudes."  Mr.  Disraeli  was  at  one  pe- 
riod of  his  career  so  affected  that  he  positively  aifected  af- 
fectation. Yet  he  was  a  man  of  undoubted  genius;  he  had 
a  spirit  that  never  quailed  under  stress  of  any  circumstances, 
however  disheartening ;  he  commanded  as  scarcely  any 
statesman  since  Chatham  himself  has  been  able  to  do;  and 
it  would  be  unjust  and  absurd  to  deny  to  a  man  gifted  with 
qualities  like  these  the  possession  of  a  lofty  nature. 

For  some  time  Mr.  Disraeli  then  seemed  resolved  to  make 
himself  remarkable — to  be  talked  about.  He  succeeded  ad- 
mirably. He  was  talked  about.  All  the  political  and  satir- 
ical journals  of  the  day  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  him. 
He  is  not  spoken  of  in  terms  of  praise  as  a  rule;  neither  has 
he  much  praise  to  shower  about  him.  Any  one  who  looks 
back  to  the  political  controversies  of  that  time  will  be  as- 
tounded at  the  language  Avhich  Mr.  Disraeli  addresses  to 
his  opponents  of  the  press,  and  which  his  opponents  address 
to  him.  In  some  cases  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  a 
squabble  between  two  Billingsgate  fish-women  in  our  day 
would  have  good  chance  of  ending  without  the  use  of  words 
and  phrases  so  coarse  as  those  which  then  passed  between 
this  brilliant  literary  man  and  some  of  his  assailants.  "We 
have  all  read  the  history  of  the  controversy  between  him 
and  O'Connell,  and  the  savage  ferocity  of  the  language  with 
which  O'Connell  denounced  him  as  "a  miscreant,"  as  "a 
wretch,"  "  a  liar,"  "  whose  life  is  a  living  lie  ;"  and,  finally,  as 
"  the  heir-at-law  of  the  blasphemous  thief  who  died  impeni- 
tent on  the  Cross."  Mr.  Disraeli  begins  his  reply  by  de- 
scribing himself  as  one  of  those  who  "  will  not  be  insulted 
even  by  a  Yahoo  without  chastising  it;"  and  afterward,  in 
a  letter  to  one  of  Mr.  O'Connell's  sons,  declares  his  desire  to 
express  "the  utter  scorn  in  which  I  hold  his  [Mr.  O'Connell's] 
character,  and  the  disgust  with  which  his  conduct  inspires 
me;"  and  informs  the  son  that  "I  shall  take  every  opportu- 
nity of  holding  your  father's  name  up  to  public  contempt, 
and  I  fervently  pray  that  you  or  some  one  of  your  blood 
may  attempt  to  avenge  the  inextinguishable  hatred  with 


262  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

which  I  shall  pursue  his  existence."  In  reading  of  a  contro- 
versy like  this  between  two  public  men,  we  seem  to  be  trans- 
ported back  to  an  age  having  absolutely  nothing  in  common 
with  our  own.  It  appears  almost  impossible  to  believe  that 
men  still  active  in  political  life  were  active  in  political  life 
then.  Yet  this  is  not  the  most  astonishing  specimen  of  the 
sort  of  controversy  in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  became  engaged  in 
hi»  younger  days.  Nothing,  perhaps,  that  the  political  lit- 
erature of  the  time  preserves  could  exceed  the  ferocity  of 
his  controversial  duel  with  O'Connell ;  but  there  are  many 
samples  of  the  rhetoric  of  abuse  to  be  found  in  the  journals 
of  the  time  which  would  far  less  bear  exposure  to  the  gaze 
of  the  fastidious  public  of  our  day.  The  duelling  system 
survived  then  and  for  long  after,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  always 
professed  himself  ready  to  sustain  with  his  pistol  anything 
that  his  lips  might  have  given  utterance  to,  even  in  the  reck- 
less heat  of  controversy.  The  social  temper  which  in  our 
time  insists  that  the  first  duty  of  a  gentleman  is  to  apologize 
for  an  unjust  or  offensive  expression  used  in  debate,  was  un- 
known then.  Perhaps  it  could  hardly  exist  to  any  great  ex- 
tent in  the  company  of  the  duelling  system.  When  a  man's 
withdrawal  of  an  offensive  expression  might  be  imputed  to  a 
want  of  physical  courage,  the  courtesy  which  impels  a  gen- 
tleman to  atone  for  a  wrong  is  not  likely  to  triumph  very 
often  over  the  fear  of  being  accounted  a  coward.  If  any 
one  doubts  the  superiority  of  manners  as  well  as  of  morals 
which  comes  of  our  milder  ways,  he  has  only  to  read  a  few 
specimens  of  the  controversies  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  earlier  days, 
when  men  who  aspired  to  be  considered  great  political  lead- 
prs  thought  it  not  unbecoming  to  call  names  like  a  coster- 
monger,  and  to  swagger  like  Bobadil  or  the  Copper  Captain. 
Mr.  Disraeli  kept  himself  well  up  to  the  level  of  his  time 
in  the  calling  of  names  and  the  swaggering ;  but  he  was 
making  himself  remarkable  in  political  controversy  as  well. 
In  the  House  of  Commons  he  began  to  be  regarded  as  a  dan- 
gerous adversary  in  debate.  He  was  wonderfully  ready 
with  retort  and  sarcasm.  But  during  all  the  earlier  part  of 
his  career  he  was  thought  of  only  as  a  free  lance.  He  had 
praised  Peel  when  Peel  said  something  that  suited  him,  or 
when  to  praise  Peel  seemed  likely  to  wound  some  one  else. 
But  it  was  during  the  debates  on  the  abolition  of  the  Corn- 


MR.  DISRAELI.  263 

laws  that  he  first  rose  to  the  fame  of  a  great  debater  and  a 
powerful  Parliamentary  orator.  We  use  the  words  Parlia- 
mentary orator  with  the  purpose  of  conveying  a  special 
qualification.  lie  is  a  great  Parliamentary  orator  who  can 
employ  the  kind  of  eloquence  and  argument  which  tell  most 
readily  on  Parliament.  But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that 
the  great  Parliamentary  orator  is  necessarily  a  great  orator 
in  the  wider  sense.  Some  of  the  men  who  made  the  greatest 
successes  as  Parliamentary  orators  have  failed  to  win  any 
genuine  reputations  as  orators  of  the  broader  and  higher 
school.  The  fame  of  Charles  Townshend's  "champagne 
speech"  has  vanished,  evanescent  almost  as  the  bubbles  from 
which  it  derived  its  inspiration  and  its  name.  No  one  now 
reads  many  even  of  the  fragments  preserved  for  us  of  those 
speeches  of  Sheridan  which  those  who  heard  them  declared 
to  have  surpassed  all  ancient  and  modern  eloquence.  The 
House  of  Commons  often  found  Burke  dull,  and  the  speeches 
of  Burke  have  passed  into  English  literature  secure  of  a  per- 
petual place  there.  Mr.  Disraeli  never  succeeded  in  being 
more  than  a  Parliamentary  orator,  and  probably  would  not 
have  cared  to  be  anything  more.  But  even  at  this  compar- 
atively early  date,  and  while  he  had  still  the  reputation  of 
being  a  whimsical,  self-confident,  and  feather-headed  advent- 
urer, he  soon  won  for  himself  the  name  of  one  who  could  hold 
his  own  in  retort  and  in  sarcasm  against  any  antagonist. 
The  days  of  the  more  elaborate  oratory  were  going  by,  and 
the  time  was  coming  when  the  pungent  epigram,  the  spark- 
ling paradox,  the  rattling  attack,  the  vivid  repartee,  would 
count  for  the  most  attractive  part  of  eloquence  with  the 
House  of  Commons. 

Mr.  Disraeli  was  exactly  the  man  to  succeed  under  the 
new  conditions  of  Parliamentary  eloquence.  Hitherto  he 
had  wanted  a  cause  to  inspire  and  justify  audacity,  and  on 
which  to  employ  with  effect  his  remarkable  resources  of  sar- 
casm and  rhetoric.  Hitherto  he  had  addressed  an  audience 
out  of  sympathy  with  him  for  the  most  part.  Now  he  was 
about  to  become  the  spokesman  of  a  large  body  of  men  who, 
chafing  and  almost  choking  with  wrath,  were  not  capable  of 
speaking  effectively  for  themselves.  Mr.  Disraeli  did,  there- 
fore, the  very  wisest  thing  he  could  do  when  he  launched 
at  once  into  a  savage  personal  attack  upon  Sir  Robert  Peel. 


264  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

The  speech  abounds  in  passages  of  audaciously  powerful 
sarcasm.  "I  am  not  one  of  the  converts,"  Mr.  Disraeli  said. 
"I  am  perhaps  a  member  of  a  fallen  party.  To  the  opinions 
which  I  have  expressed  in  this  House  in  favor  of  Protection 
I  still  adhere.  They  sent  me  to  this  House,  and  if  I  had  re- 
linquished them  I  should  have  relinquished  my  seat  also." 
That  was  the  key-note  of  the  speech.  He  denounced  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  not  for  having  changed  his  opinions,  but  for 
having  retained  a  position  which  enabled  him  to  betray  his 
party.  He  compared  Peel  to  the  Lord  High-Admiral  of  the 
Turkish  fleet,  who,  at  a  great  warlike  crisis,  when  he  was 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  finest  armament  that  ever  left  the 
Dardanelles  since  the  days  of  Solyman  the  Great,  steered  at 
once  for  the  enemy's  port,  and  when  arraigned  as  a  traitor, 
said  that  he  really  saw  no  use  in  prolonging  a  hopeless  strug- 
gle, and  that  he  had  accepted  the  command  of  the  fleet  only 
to  put  the  Sultan  out  of  pain  by  bringing  the  struggle  to  a 
close  at  once.  "  Well  do  we  remember,  on  this  side  of  the 
House — not,  perhaps,  without  a  blush — the  efforts  we  made 
to  raise  him  to  the  bench  where  he  now  sits.  Who  does  not 
remember  the  sacred  cause  of  Protection  for  which  sover- 
eigns were  thwarted,  Parliament  dissolved,  and  a  nation 
taken  in?"  "I  belong  to  a  party  which  can  triumph  no 
more,  for  we  have  nothing  left  on  our  side  except  the  con- 
stituencies which  we  have  not  betrayed."  He  denounced 
Peel  as  "a  man  who  never  originates  an  idea;  a  watcher 
of  the  atmosphere ;  a  man  who  takes  his  observations,  and 
when  he  finds  the  wind  in  a  particular  quarter  trims  his  sails 
to  suit  it;"  and  he  declared  that  "such  a  man  may  be  a 
powerful  minister,  but  he  is  no  more  a  great  statesman  than 
the  man  who  gets  up  behind  a  carriage  is  a  great  whip." 

"The  opportune,"  says  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  in  his  "Lord 
George  Bentinck,"  "in  a  popular  assembly  has  sometimes 
more  success  than  the  weightiest  efforts  of  research  and 
reason."  He  is  alluding  to  this  very  speech,  of  which  he 
says,  with  perhaps  a  superfluous  modesty,  that  "  it  was  the 
long -constrained  passion  of  the  House  that  now  found  a 
vent,  far  more  than  the  sallies  of  the  speaker,  that  changed 
the  frigid  silence  of  this  senate  into  excitement  and  tumult." 
The  speech  was  indeed  opportune.  But  it  was  opportune 
in  a  far  larger  sense  than  as  a  timely  philippic  rattling  up 


MR.  DISRAELI.  265 

an  exhausted  and  disappointed  House.  That  moment  when 
Disraeli  rose  was  the  very  turning-point  of  the  fortunes  of 
his  part}7.  There  was  genius,  there  was  positive  statesman- 
ship, in  seizing  so  boldly  and  so  adroitly  on  the  moment. 
It  would  have  been  a  great  thing  gained  for  Peel  if  he 
could  have  got  through  that  first  night  without  any  alarm- 
note  of  opposition  from  his  own  side.  The  habits  of  Par- 
liamentary discipline  are  very  clinging.  They  are  hard  to 
tear  away.  Every  impulse  of  association  and  training  pro- 
tests against  the  very  effort  to  rend  them  asunder.  A  once 
powerful  minister  exercises  a  control  over  his  long  obedi- 
ent followers  somewhat  like  that  of  the  heart  of  the  Bruce 
in  the  fine  old  Scottish  story.  Those  who  once  follo\ved 
will  still  obey  the  name  and  the  symbol  even  when  the  act- 
ual power  to  lead  is  gone  forever.  If  one  other  night's  hab- 
itude had  been  added  to  the  long  discipline  that  bound  his 
party  to  Peel,  if  they  had  allowed  themselves  to  listen  to 
that  declaration  of  the  session's  first  night  without  mur- 
mur, perhaps  they  might  never  have  rebelled.  Mr.  Disraeli 
drew  together  into  one  focus  all  the  rays  of  their  gathering 
anger  against  Peel,  and  made  them  light  into  a  flame.  He 
showed  the  genius  of  the  born  leader  by  stepping  forth  at 
the  critical  moment  and  giving  the  word  of  command. 

From  that  hour  Mr.  Disraeli  was  the  real  leader  of  the 
Tory  squires ;  from  that  moment  his  voice  gave  the  word 
of  command  to  the  Tory  party.  There  was  peculiar  cour- 
age, too,  in  the  part  he  took.  He  must  have  known  that  he 
was  open  to  one  retort  from  Peel  that  might  have  crushed 
a  less  confident  man.  It  was  well  known  that  when  Peel 
was  coming  into  power  Disraeli  expected  to  be  offered  a 
place  of  some  kind  in  the  ministry,  and  would  have  accept- 
ed it.  Mr.  Disraeli  afterward  explained,  when  Peel  made 
allusion  to  the  fact,  that  he  never  had  put  himself  directly 
forward  as  a  candidate  for  office;  but  there  had  undoubt- 
edly been  some  negotiation  going  forward  which  was  con- 
ducted on  Mr.  Disraeli's  side  by  some  one  who  supposed  he 
was  doing  what  Disraeli  would  like  to  have  done ;  and  Peel 
had  not  taken  any  hint,  and  would  not  in  any  way  avail 
himself  of  Disraeli's  services.  Disraeli  must  have  known 
that  when  he  attacked  Peel,  the  latter  would  hardly  fail  to 
make  use  of  this  obvious  retort ;  but  he  felt  little  daunted 

I.— 12 


266  A  HISTORY  OF  OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

on  that  score.  He  could  have  made  a  fair  enough  defence 
of  his  consistency  in  any  case,  but  he  knew  very  well  that 
what  the  indignant  Tories  wanted  just  then  was  not  a  man 
who  had  been  uniformity  consistent,  but  one  who  could  at- 
tack Sir  Robert  Peel  without  scruple  and  with  effect.  Dis- 
raeli made  his  own  career  by  the  course  he  took  on  that 
memorable  night,  and  he  also  made  a  new  career  for  the 
Tory  party. 

Now  that  he  had  proved  himself  so  brilliant  a  spadassin 
in  this  debate,  men  began  to  remember  that  he  had  dealt 
trenchant  blows  before.  Many  of  his  sentences  attacking 
Peel,  which  have  passed  into  familiar  quotation  almost  like 
proverbs,  were  spoken  in  1845.  He  had  accused  the  great 
minister  of  having  borrowed  his  tactics  from  the  Whigs. 
"The  right  honorable  gentleman  caught  the  Whigs  bathing, 
and  he  walked  away  with  their  clothes.  He  has  left  them 
in  the  full  enjoyment  of  their  liberal  position,  and  he  is  him- 
self a  strict  conservative  of  their  garments."  "  I  look  on 
the  right-honorable  gentleman  as  a  man  who  has  tamed  the 
shrew  of  Liberalism  by  her  own  tactics.  He  is  the  political 
Petruchio  who  has  outbid  you  all."  "  If  the-  right-honor- 
able gentleman  would  only  stick  to  quotation  instead  of 
having  recourse  to  obloquy,  he  may  rely  upon  it  he  would 
find  it  a  safer  weapon.  It  is  one  he  always  wields  with  the 
hand  of  a  master,  and  when  he  does  appeal  to  any  authority 
in  prose  or  verse,  he  is  sure  to  be  successful,  partly  because 
he  seldom  quotes  a  passage  that  has  not  already  received 
the  meed  of  Parliamentary  approbation."  We  can  all  read- 
ily understand  how  such  a  hit  as  the  last  would  tell  in  the 
case  of  an  orator  like  Peel,  who  had  the  old-fashioned  way 
of  introducing  long  quotations  from  approved  classic  au- 
thors into  his  speeches,  and  who  not  unfrequently  introduced 
citations  which  were  received  with  all  the  better  welcome 
by  the  House  because  of  the  familiarity  of  their  language. 
More  fierce  and  cutting  was  the  reference  to  Canning,  with 
whom  Peel  had  quarrelled,  and  the  implied  contrast  of  Can- 
ning with  Peel.  Sir  Robert  had  cited  against  Disraeli  Can- 
ning's famous  lines  praying  to  be  saved  from  a  "candid 
friend."  Disraeli  seized  the  opportunity  thus  given.  "  The 
name  of  Canning  is  one,"  he  said,  "  never  to  be  mentioned, 
I  am  sure,  in  this  House  without  emotion.  We  all  admire 


MB.  DISRAELI.  267 

his  genius;  we  all,  or  at  least  most  of  us,  deplore  his  un- 
timely end ;  and  we  all  sympathize  with  him  in  his  severe 
struggle  with  supreme  prejudice  and  sublime  mediocrity, 
with  inveterate  foes  and  with  candid  friends."  The  phrase 
"  sublime  mediocrity  "  had  a  marvellous  effect.  As  a  hostile 
description  of  Peel's  character  it  had  enough  of  seeming 
truth  about  it  to  tell  most  effectively  alike  on  friends  and 
enemies  of  the  great  leader.  A  friend,  or  even  an  impartial 
enemy,  would  not  indeed  admit  that  it  accurately  described 
Peel's  intellect  and  position;  but  as  a  stroke  of  personal 
satire  it  touched  nearly  enough  the  characteristics  of  its  ob- 
ject to  impress  itself  at  once  as  a  master-hit  on  the  minds 
of  all  who  caught  its  instant  purpose.  The  words  remained 
in  use  long  after  the  controversy  and  its  occasion  had  passed 
away ;  and  it  was  allowed  that  an  unfriendly  and  bitter 
critic  could  hardly  have  found  a  phrase  more  suited  to  its 
ungenial  purpose  or  more  likely  to  connect  itself  at  once  in 
the  public  mind  with  the  name  of  him  who  was  its  object. 
Mr.  Disraeli  did  not,  in  fact,  greatly  admire  Canning.  He 
has  left  a  very  disparaging  criticism  of  Canning  as  an  ora- 
tor in  one  of  his  novels.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  shown 
in  his  "Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck"  that  he  could  do  full 
justice  to  some  of  the  greatest  qualities  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 
But  at  the  moment  of  his  attacking  Peel  and  crying  up  Can- 
ning he  was  only  concerned  to  disparage  the  one,  and  it  was 
on  this  account  that  he  eulogized  the  other.  The  famous 
sentence,  too,  in  which  he  declared  that  a  Conservative  Gov- 
ernment was  an  "  organized  hypocrisy,"  was  spoken  during 
the  debates  of  the  session  of  1845,  before  the  explanation  of 
the  minister  on  the  subject  of  Free-trade.  All  these  brill- 
iant things  men  now  began  to  recall.  Looking  back  from 
this  distance  of  time,  we  can  see  well  enough  that  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli had  displayed  his  peculiar  genius  long  before  the 
House  of  Commons  took  the  pains  to  recognize  it.  From 
the  night  of  the  opening  of  the  session  of  1846  it  Avas  never 
questioned.  Thenceforward  he  was  really  the  mouth-piece 
and  the  sense-carrier  of  his  party.  For  some  time  to  come, 
indeed,  his  nominal  post  might  have  seemed  to  be  only  that 
of  its  bravo.  The  country  gentlemen  who  cheered  to  the 
echo  his  fierce  attacks  on  Peel  during  the  debates  of  the  ses- 
sion of  1846,  had  probably  not  the  slightest  suspicion  that 


268  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

the  daring  rhetorician  who  was  so  savagely  revenging  them 
on  their  now  hated  leader  was  a  man  of  as  cool  a  judgment, 
as  long  a  head,  and  as  complete  a  capacity  for  the  control 
of  a  party  as  any  politician  who  for  generations  had  appeared 
in  the  House  of  Commons. 

One  immediate  effect  of  the  turn  thus  given  by  Disraeli's 
timely  intervention  in  the  debate  was  the  formation  of  a 
Protection  party  in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  leader- 
ship of  this  perilous  adventure  was  intrusted  to  Lord 
George  Bentinck,  a  sporting  nobleman  of  energetic  charac- 
ter, great  tenacity  of  purpose  and  conviction,  and  a  not  in- 
considerable aptitude  for  politics,  which  had  hitherto  had 
no  opportunity  for  either  exercising  or  displaying  itself. 
Lord  George  Bentinck  had  sat  in  eight  Parliaments  with- 
out taking  part  in  any  great  debate.  When  he  was  sud- 
denly drawn  into  the  leadership  of  the  Protection  party  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  he  gave  himself  up  to  it  entirely. 
He  had  at  first  only  joined  the  party  as  one  of  its  organ- 
izers; but  he  showed  himself  in  many  respects  well  fitted 
for  the  leadership,  and  the  choice  of  leaders  was  in  any  case 
very  limited.  When  once  he  had  accepted  the  position,  he 
was  unwearying  in  his  attention  to  its  duties ;  and,  indeed, 
up  to  the  moment  of  his  sudden  and  premature  death  he 
never  allowed  himself  any  relaxation  from  the  cares  it  im- 
posed on  him.  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  his  "Life  of  Lord  George 
Bentinck,"  has  indeed  overrated,  with  the  pardonable  ex- 
travagance of  friendship,  the  intellectual  gifts  of  his  leader. 
Bentinck's  abilities  were  hardly  even  of  the  second  class; 
and  the  amount  of  knowledge  which  he  brought  to  bear  on 
the  questions  he  discussed  with  so  much  earnestness  and 
energy  was  often  and  of  necessity  little  better  than  mere 
cram.  But  in  Parliament  the  essential  qualities  of  a  leader 
are  not  great  powers  of  intellect.  A  man  of  cool  head, 
good  temper,  firm  will,  and  capacity  for  appreciating  the 
serviceable  qualities  of  other  men,  may  always,  provided  that 
he  has  high  birth  and  great  social  influence,  make  a  very 
successful  leader,  even  though  he  be  wanting  altogether  in 
the  higher  attributes  of  eloquence  and  statesmanship.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether,  on  the  whole,  great  eloquence  and 
genius  are  necessary  at  all  to  the  leader  of  a  party  in  Parlia- 
ment in  times  not  specially  troublous.  Bentinck  had  pa- 


MR.  DISRAELI.  269 

tience,  energy,  good  -  humor,  and  considerable  appreciation 
of  the  characters  of  men.  If  he  had  a  bad  voice,  was  a  poor 
speaker,  talked  absolute  nonsense  about  protective  duties 
and  sugar  and  guano,  and  made  up  absurd  calculations  to 
prove  impossibilities  and  paradoxes,  he  at  least  always  spoke 
in  full  faith,  and  was  only  the  more  necessary  to  his  party 
because  he  could  honestly  continue  to  believe  in  the  old 
doctrines,  no  matter  what  political  economy  and  hard  facts 
might  say  to  the  contrary. 

The  secession  was,  therefore,  in  full  course  of  organization. 
On  January  27th  Sir  Robert  Peel  came  forward  to  explain 
his  financial  policy.  It  is  almost  superfluous  to  say  that 
the  most  intense  anxiety  prevailed  all  over  the  country,  and 
that  the  House  was  crowded.  An  incident  of  the  night, 
which  then  created  a  profound  sensation,  would  not  be 
worth  noticing  now  but  for  the  evidence  it  gives  of  the  bit- 
terness with  which  the  Protection  party  were  filled,  and  of 
the  curiously  bad  taste  of  which  gentlemen  of  position  and 
education  can  be  guilty  under  the  inspiration  of  a  blind 
fanaticism.  There  is  something  ludicrous  in  the  pompous 
tone,  as  of  righteous  indignation  deliberately  repressed,  with 
which  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  his  "Life  of  Bentinck,"  announces  the 
event.  The  proceedings  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he  says, 
"  were  ushered  in  by  a  startling  occurrence."  What  was 
this  portentous  preliminary  ?  "  His  Royal  Highness  the 
Prince  Consort,  attended  by  the  Master  of  the  Horse,  ap- 
peared and  took  his  seat  in  the  body  of  the  House  to  listen 
to  the  statement  of  the  First  Minister."  In  other  words, 
there  was  to  be  a  statement  of  great  importance  and  a 
debate  of  profound  interest,  and  the  husband  of  the  Queen 
was  anxious  to  be  a  listener.  The  Prince  Consort  did  not 
understand  that  because  he  had  married  the  Queen  he  was 
therefore  to  be  precluded  from  hearing  a  discussion  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  poorest  man  and  the  greatest 
man  in  the  land  were  alike  free  to  occupy  a  seat  in  one  of 
the  galleries  of  the  House,  and  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at 
if  the  Prince  Consort  fancied  that  he  too  might  listen  to  a 
debate  without  unhinging  the  British  Constitution.  Lord 
George  Bentinck  and  the  Protectionists  were  aflame  with 
indignation.  They  saw  in  the  quiet  presence  of  the  intelli- 
gent gentleman  who  came  to  listen  to  the  discussion  an  at- 


270  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tempt  to  overawe  the  Commons  and  compel  them  to  bend 
to  the  will  of  the  Crown.  It  is  not  easy  to  read  without  a 
feeling  of  shame  the  absurd  and  unseemly  comments  which 
were  made  upon  this  harmless  incident.  The  Queen  herself 
has  given  an  explanation  of  the  Prince's  visit  which  is 
straightforward  and  dignified.  "The  Prince  merely  went, 
as  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Queen's  other  sons  do,  for 
once,  to  hear  a  fine  debate,  which  is  so  useful  to  all  princes." 
"But  this,"  the  Queen  adds,  "  he  naturally  felt  unable  to  do 
again." 

The  Prime-minister  announced  his  policy.  His  object  was 
to  abandon  the  sliding-scale  altogether;  but  for  the  present 
he  intended  to  impose  a  duty  of  ten  shillings  a  quarter  on 
corn  when  the  price  of  it  was  under  forty-eight  shillings  a 
quarter;  to  reduce  that  duty  by  one  shilling  for  every  shil- 
ling of  rise  in  price  until  it  reached  fifty-three  shillings  a 
quarter,  when  the  duty  should  fall  to  four  shillings.  This 
arrangement  was,  however,  only  to  hold  good  for  three 
years,  at  the  end  of  which  time  protective  duties  on  grain 
were  to  be  wholly  abandoned.  Peel  explained  that  he  in- 
tended gradually  to  apply  the  principle  of  Free-trade  to 
manufactures  and  every  description  of  produce,  bearing  in 
mind  the  necessity  of  providing  for  the  expenditure  of  the 
country,  and  of  smoothing  away  some  of  the  difficulties 
which  a  sudden  withdrawal  of  protection  might  cause.  The 
differential  duties  on  sugar,  which  were  professedly  intended 
to  protect  the  growers  of  free  sugars  against  the  competition 
of  those  who  cultivated  sugar  by  the  use  of  slave  labor,  were 
to  be  diminished,  but  not  abolished.  The  duties  on  the  im- 
portation of  foreign  cattle  were  to  be  at  once  removed.  In 
order  to  compensate  the  agricultural  interests  for  the  grad- 
ual withdrawal  of  protective  duties,  there  were  to  be  some 
readjustments  of  local  burdens.  We  need  not  dwell  much 
on  this  part  of  the  explanation.  We  are  familiar  in  late 
years  with  the  ingenious  manner  in  which  the  principle  of 
the  readjustment  of  local  burdens  is  worked  in  the  hope  of 
conciliating  the  agricultural  interests.  These  readjustments 
are  not  usually  received  with  any  great  gratitude  or  attend- 
ed by  any  particular  success.  In  this  instance  Sir  Robert 
Peel  could  hardly  have  laid  much  serious  stress  on  them. 
If  the  land-owners  and  farmers  had  really  any  just  ground 


MR.  DISRAELI.  271 

of  complaint  in  the  abolition  of  protection,  the  salve  which 
was  applied  to  their  wound  would  scarcely  have  caused 
them  to  forget  its  pains.  The  important  part  of  the  expla- 
nation, so  far  as  history  is  concerned,  consisted  in  the  fact 
that  Peel  proclaimed  himself  an  absolute  convert  to  the 
Free-trade  principle,  and  that  the  introduction  of  the  prin- 
ciple into  all  departments  of  our  commercial  legislation  was, 
according  to  his  intention,  to  be  a  mere  question  of  time 
and  convenience.  The  struggle  was  to  be  between  Protec- 
tion and  Free-trade. 

Not  that  the  proposals  of  the  ministry  wholly  satisfied 
the  professed  Free-traders.  These  latter  would  have  en- 
forced, if  they  could,  an  immediate  application  of  the  prin- 
ciple without  the  interval  of  three  years,  and  the  devices 
and  shifts  which  were  to  be  put  in  operation  during  that 
middle  time.  But  of  course,  although  they  pressed  their 
protest  in  the  form  of  an  amendment,  they  had  no  idea  of 
not  taking  what  they  could  get  when  the  amendment  failed 
to  secure  the  approval  of  the  majority.  The  Protectionist 
amendment  amounted  to  a  distinct  proposal  that  the  poli- 
cy of  the  Government  be  absolutely  rejected  by  the  House. 
The  debate  lasted  for  twelve  nights,  and  at  the  end  the  Pro- 
tectionists had  240  votes  against  337  given  on  behalf  of 
the  policy  of  the  Government.  The  majority  of  97  was  not 
quite  so  large  as  the  Government  had  anticipated ;  and  the 
result  was  to  encourage  the  Protectionists  in  their  plans  of 
opposition.  The  opportunities  of  obstruction  were  many. 
The  majority  just  mentioned  was  merely  in  favor  of  going 
into  committee  of  the  whole  House  to  consider  the  existing 
Customs  and  Corn  Acts ;  but  every  single  financial  scheme 
which  the  minister  had  to  propose  must  be  introduced,  de- 
bated, and  carried,  if  it  was  to  be  carried,  as  a  separate  bill. 
We  shall  not  ask  our  readers  to  follow  us  into  the  details 
of  these  long  discussions.  They  were  not  important ;  they 
were  often  not  dignified.  They  more  frequently  concerned 
themselves  about  the  conduct  and  personal  consistency  of 
the  minister  than  about  the  merits  of  his  policy.  The  ar- 
guments in  favor  of  Protection,  which  doubtless  seemed 

O  f 

effective  to  the  country  gentlemen  then,  seem  like  the  prat- 
tle of  children  now.  Thei-e  were,  indeed,  some  exciting 
passages  in  the  debates.  For  these  the  House  was  mainly 


272  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

indebted  to  the  rhetoric  of  Mr.  Disraeli.  That  indefatigable 
and  somewhat  reckless  champion  occupied  himself  with  in- 
cessant attacks  on  the  Prime-minister.  He  described  Peel 
as  "  a  trader  on  other  people's  intelligence ;  a  political  bur- 
glar of  other  men's  ideas."  "The  occupants  of  the  Treasury 
bench,"  he  said,  were  "  political  peddlers,  who  had  bought 
their  party  in  the  cheapest  market  and  sold  it  in  the  dear- 
est." This  was  strong  language.  But  it  was,  after  all,  more 
justifiable  than  the  attempt  Mr.  Disraeli  made  to  revive  an 
old  and  bitter  controversy  between  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  Mr. 
Cobden,  which,  for  the  sake  of  the  former,  had  better  have 
been  forgotten.  Three  years  before,  Mr.  Edward  Drum- 
mond,  private  secretary  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  was  shot  by  an 
assassin.  There  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  victim  had  been 
mistaken  for  the  Prime-minister  himself.  The  assassin  turn- 
ed out  to  be  a  lunatic,  and  as  such  was  found  not  guilty  of 
the  murder,  and  was  consigned  to  a  lunatic  asylum.  The 
event  naturally  had  a  profound  effect  on  Sir  Robert  Peel; 
and  during  one  of  the  debates  on  Free -trade,  Mr.  Cobden 
happening  to  say  that  he  would  hold  the  Prime -minister 
responsible  for  the  condition  of  the  country,  Peel,  in  an  ex- 
traordinary burst  of  excitement,  interpreted  the  words  as  a 
threat  to  expose  him  to  the  attack  of  an  assassin.  Nothing 
could  be  more  painfully  absurd  ;  and  nothing  could  better 
show  the  unreasoning  and  discreditable  hatred  of  the  Tories 
at  that  time  for  any  one  who  opposed  the  policy  of  Peel, 
than  the  fact  that  they  actually  cheered  their  leader  again 
and  again  when  he  made  this  passionate  and  half-frenzied 
charge  on  one  of  the  purest  and  noblest  men  who  ever  sat 
in  the  English  Parliament.  Peel  soon  recovered  his  senses. 
He  saw  the  error  of  which  he  had  been  guilty,  and  regretted 
it;  and  it  ought  to  have  been  consigned  to  forgetfulness ; 
but  Mr.  Disraeli,  in  repelling  a  charge  made  against  him 
of  indulging  in  unjustifiable  personalities,  revived  the  whole 
story,  and  reminded  the  House  of  Commons  that  the  Prime- 
minister  had  charged  the  leader  of  the  Free-trade  League 
with  inciting  assassins  to  murder  him.  This  unjustifiable 
attempt  to  rekindle  an  old  quarrel  had,  however,  no  other 
effect  than  to  draw  from  Sir  Robert  Peel  a  renewed  expres- 
sion of  apology  for  the  charge  he  had  made  against  Mr. 
Cobdon,  "  in  the  course  of  a  heated  debate,  when  I  put  an 


MR.  DISRAELI.  273 

erroneous  construction  on  some  expressions  used  by  the  hon- 
orable member  for  Stockport."  Mr.  Cobden  declared  that 
the  explanation  made  by  Peel  was  entirely  satisfactory,  and 
expressed  his  hope  that  uo  one  on  either  side  of  the  House 
would  attempt  to  revive  the  subject  or  make  further  allu- 
sion to  it. 

The  Government  prevailed.  It  would  be  superfluous  to 
go  into  any  details  as  to  the  progress  of  the  Corn  Bill. 
Enough  to  say  that  the  third  reading  of  the  bill  passed  the 
House  of  Commons  on  May  15th,  by  a  majority  of  98  votes. 
The  bill  was  at  once  sent  up  to  the  House  of  Lords,  and,  by 
means  chiefly  of  the  earnest  advice  of  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, was  carried  through  that  House  without  much  serious 
opposition.  But  June  25th,  the  day  when  the  bill  was  read 
for  a  third  time  in  the  House  of  Lords,  was  a  memorable  day 
in  the  Parliamentary  annals  of  England.  It  saw  the  fall  of 
the  ministry  who  had  carried  to  success  the  greatest  piece 
of  legislation  that  had  been  introduced  since  Lord  Grey's 
Reform  Bill. 

A  Coercion  Bill  for  Ireland  was  the  measure  which  brought 
this  catastrophe  on  the  Government  of  Sir  Robert  Peel. 
While  the  Corn  Bill  was  yet  passing  through  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  Government  felt  called  upon,  in  consequence 
of  the  condition  of  crimefcgnd  outrage  in  Ireland,  to  intro- 
duce a  Coercion  Bill.  Lord  George  Bentinck  at  first  gave 
the  measure  his  support;  but  during  the  Whitsuntide  recess 
he  changed  his  views.  He  now  declared  that  he  had  only 
supported  the  bill  on  the  assurance  of  the  Government  that 
it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  the  safety  of  life  in  Ireland, 
and  that  as  the  Government  had  not  pressed  it  on  in  ad- 
vance of  every  other  measure — especially,  no  doubt,  of  the- 
Corn  Bill — he  could  not  believe  that  it  was  really  a  matter 
of  imminent  necessity ;  and  that,  furthermore,  he  had  no  long- 
er any  confidence  in  the  Government,  and  could  not  trust 
them  with  extraordinary  powers.  In  truth,  the  bill  was 
placing  the  Government  in  a  serious  difficulty.  All  the 
Irish  followers  of  O'Connell  would,  of  course,  oppose  the  co- 
ercion measure.  The  Whigs,  when  out  of  office,  have  usual- 
ly made  it  a  rule  to  oppose  coercion  bills  if  they  do  not 
come  accompanied  with  some  promises  of  legislative  reform 
and  concession.  The  English  Radical  members,  Mr.  Cobden 

12* 


274  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

and  his  followers,  were  almost  sure  to  oppose  it.  Under 
these  circumstances,  it  seemed  probable  enough  that  if  the 
Protectionists  joined  with  the  other  opponents  of  the  Coer- 
cion Bill,  the  Government  must  be  defeated.  The  tempta- 
tion was  too  great.  As  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  candidly  says 
of  his  party, "  Vengeance  had  succeeded  in  most  breasts  to 
the  more  sanguine  sentiment.  The  field  was  lost,  but  at  any 
rate  there  should  be  retribution  for  those  who  had  betrayed 
it."  The  question  with  many  of  the  indignant  Protection- 
ists was,  as  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  puts  it,  "How  was  Sir  Rob- 
ert Peel  to  be  turned  out?"  It  soon  became  evident  that 
he  could  be  turned  out  by  those  who  detested  him  and 
longed  for  vengeance  voting  against  him  on  the  Coercion 
Bill.  This  was  done.  The  fiercer  Protectionists  voted  with 
the  Free-traders,  the  Whigs,  and  the  Irish  Catholic  and  Lib- 
eral members,  and,  after  a  debate  of  much  bitterness  and 
passion,  the  division  on  the  second  reading  of  the  Coercion 
Bill  took  place  on  Thursday,  June  25th,  and  the  ministry 
were  left  in  a  minority  of  73.  Two  hundred  and  nineteen 
votes  only  were  given  for  the  second  reading  of  the  bill,  and 
292  against  it.  Some  eighty  of  the  Protectionists  followed 
Lord  George  Bentinck  into  the  lobby  to  vote  against  the 
bill,  and  their  votes  settled  the  question.  Mr.  Disraeli  has 
given  a  somewhat  pompous  description  of  the  scene  "  as  the 
Protectionists  passed  in  defile  before  the  minister  to  the  hos- 
tile lobby."  ^Pallas  te  hoc  vulnere,  Pallas  immolat"  cries 
the  hero  of  the  JEneid,  as  he  plunges  his  sword  into  the 
heart  of  his  rival.  "  Protection  kills  you  ;  not  your  Coer- 
cion Bill,"  the  irreconcilable  Protectionists  might  have  said 
as  they  trooped  past  the  ministry.  Chance  had  put  within 
.their  grasp  the  means  of  vengeance,  and  they  had  seized  it, 
and  made  successful  use  of  it.  The  Peel  Ministry  had  fallen 
in  its  very  hour  of  triumph. 

Three  days  after  Sir  Robert  Peel  announced  his  resigna- 
tion of  office.  His  speech  "  was  considered  one  of  glori- 
fication and  pique,"  says  Mr.  Disraeli.  It  does  not  so  im- 
press most  readers.  It  appears  to  have  been  full  of  dignity, 
and  of  emotion,  not  usual  with  Peel,  but  not  surely,  under 
the  circumstances,  incompatible  with  dignity.  It  contained 
that  often-quoted  tribute  to  the  services  of  a  former  oppo- 
nent, in  which  Peel  declared  that  "  the  name  which  ought 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  ETC.  275 

to  be  and  which  will  be  associated  with  the  success  of  these 
measures  is  the  name  of  the  man  who,  acting,  I  believe,  from 
pure  and  disinterested  motives,  has  advocated  their  cause 
with  untiring  energy,  and  with  appeals  to  reason  enforced 
by  an  eloquence  the  more  to  be  admired  because  it  is  unaf- 
fected and  unadorned — the  name  of  Richard  Cobden."  An 
added  effect  was  given  to  this  well-deserved  panegyric  by 
the  little  irregularity  which  the  Prime-minister  committed 
when  he  mentioned  in  debate  a  member  by  name.  The 
closing  sentence  of  the  speech  was  eloquent  and  touching. 
Many  would  censure  him,  Peel  said ;  his  name  would  per- 
haps be  execrated  by  the  monopolist,  who  would  maintain 
protection  for  his  own  individual  benefit;  "but  it  may  be 
that  I  shall  leave  a  name  sometimes  remembered  with  ex- 
pressions of  good-will  in  those  places  which  are  the  abode  of 
men  whose  lot  it  is  to  labor  and  to  earn  their  daily  bread  by 
the  sweat  of  their  brow — a  name  remembered  with  expres- 
sions of  good-will  when  they  shall  recreate  their  exhausted 
strength  with  abundant  and  untaxed  food,  the  sweeter  be- 
cause it  is  no  longer  leavened  with  a  sense  of  injustice." 

The  great  minister  fell.  So  great  a  success  followed  by 
so  sudden  and  complete  a  fall  is  hardly  recorded  in  the  Par- 
liamentary history  of  our  modern  times.  Peel  had  crushed 
O'Connell  and  carried  Free -trade,  and  O'Connell  and  the 
Protectionists  had  life  enough  yet  to  pull  him  down.  He  is 
as  a  conqueror  who,  having  won  the  great  victory  of  his  life, 
is  struck  by  a  hostile  hand  in  some  by-way  as  he  passes 
home  to  enjoy  his  triumph. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL   TROUBLE,  AND   FOREIGN   INTRIGUE. 

LORD  JOHN  RUSSELL  succeeded  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  First 
Lord  of  the  Treasury;  Lord  Palmerston  became  Foreign 
Secretary;  Sir  Charles  Wood  was  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer ;  Lord  Grey  took  charge  of  the  Colonies ;  and  Sir 
George  Grey  was  Home  Secretary.  Mr.  Macaulay  accept- 
ed the  office  of  Paymaster-general,  with  a  seat  in  the  cabi- 
net, a  distinction  not  usually  given  to  the  occupant  of  that 


276  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

office.  The  ministry  was  not  particularly  strong  in  admin- 
istrative talent.  The  Premier  and  the  Foreign  Secretary 
were  the  only  members  of  the  cabinet  who  could  be  called 
statesmen  of  the  first  class ;  and  even  Lord  Palmerston  had 
not  as  yet  won  more  than  a  somewhat  doubtful  kind  of 
fame,  and  was  looked  upon  as  a  man  quite  as  likely  to  do 
mischief  as  good  to  any  ministry  of  which  he  might  happen 
to  form  a  part.  Lord  Grey  then  and  since  only  succeeded 
somehow  in  missing  the  career  of  a  leading  statesman.  He 
had  great  talents  and  some  originality ;  he  was  independent 
and  bold.  But  his  independence  degenerated  too  often  into 
impracticability  and  even  eccentricity ;  and  he  was,  in  fact, 
a  politician  with  whom  ordinary  men  could  not  work.  Sir 
Charles  Wood,  the  new  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  had 
solid  sense  and  excellent  administrative  capacity,  but  he 
was  about  as  bad  a  public  speaker  as  ever  addressed  the 
House  of  Commons.  His  budget  speeches  were  often  made 
so  unintelligible  by  defective  manner  and  delivery  that  they 
might  almost  as  well  have  been  spoken  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage. Sir  George  Grey  was  a  speaker  of  fearful  fluency, 
and  a  respectable  administrator  of  the  second  or  third  class. 
He  was  as  plodding  in  administration  as  he  was  precipitate 
of  speech. 

"Peel,"  wrote  Lord  Palmerston  to  a  friend  a  short  time 
after  the  formation  of  the  new  ministry,  "  seems  to  have 
made  up  his  mind  that  for  a  year  or  two  he  cannot  hope  to 
form  a  party,  and  that  he  must  give  people  a  certain  time 
to  forget  the  events  of  last  year;  in  the  mean  while,  it  is 
evident  that  he  does  not  wish  that  any  other  Government 
should  be  formed  out  of  the  people  on  his  side  of  the  House, 
because  of  that  Government  he  would  not  be  a  member. 
For  these  reasons,  and  also  because  he  sincerely  thinks  it 
best  that  we  should,  for  the  present,  remain  in,  he  gives  us 
very  cordial  support,  as  far  as  he  can,  without  losing  his  in- 
dependent position.  Graham,  who  sits  up  under  his  old  pil- 
lar, and  never  comes  down  to  Peel's  bench  even  for  personal 
communication,  seems  to  keep  himself  aloof  from  everybody, 
and  to  hold  himself  free  to  act  according  to  circumstances ; 
but  as  yet  he  is  not  considered  as  the  head  of  any  party. 
George  Bentinck  has  entirely  broken  down  as  a  candidate 
for  ministerial  position  ;  and  thus  we  are  left  masters  of  the 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TKOUBLE,  ETC.  277 

field,  not  only  on  account  of  our  own  merits,  which,  though 
we  say  it  ourselves,  are  great,  but  by  virtue  of  the  absence 
of  any  efficient  competitors."  Palmerston's  humorous  esti- 
mate of  the  state  of  affairs  was  accurate.  The  new  ministry 
was  safe  enough,  because  there  was  no  party  in  a  condition 
to  compete  with  it. 

The  position  of  the  Government  of  Lord  John  Russell  was 
not  one  to  be  envied.  The  Irish  famine  occupied  all  atten- 
tion, and  soon  seemed  to  be  an  evil  too  great  for  any  minis- 
try to  deal  with.  The  failure  of  the  potato  was  an  over- 
whelming disaster  for  a  people  almost  wholly  agricultural 
and  a  peasantry  long  accustomed  to  live  upon  that  root 
alone.  Ireland  contains  very  few  large  towns ;  when  the 
names  of  four  or  five  are  mentioned  the  list  is  done  with, 
and  we  have  to  come  to  mere  villages.  The  country  has 
hardly  any  manufactures  except  that  of  linen  in  the  north- 
ern province.  In  the  south  and  west  the  people  live  by  ag- 
riculture alone.  The  cottier  system,  which  prevailed  almost 
universally  in  three  of  the  four  provinces,  was  an  arrange- 
ment by  which  a  man  obtained  in  return  for  his  labor  a 
right  to  cultivate  a  little  patch  of  ground,  just  enough  to 
supply  him  with  food  for  the  scanty  maintenance  of  his  fam- 
ily. The  great  landlords  were  for  the  most  part  absentees ; 
the  smaller  landlords  were  often  deeply  in  debt,  and  were, 
therefore,  compelled  to  screw  every  possible  penny  of  rent 
out  of  their  tenants-at-will.  They  had  not,  however,  even 
that  regularity  and  order  in  their  exactions  that  might  at 
least  have  forced  upon  the  tenants  some  habits  of  fore- 
thought and  exactness.  There  was  a  sort  of  understanding 
that  the  rent  was  always  to  be  somewhat  in  arrear ;  the 
supposed  kindness  of  a  landlord  consisted  in  his  allowing 
the  indebtedness  to  increase  more  liberally  than  others  of 
his  class  would  do.  There  was  a  demoralizing  slatternliness 
in  the  whole  system.  It  was  almost  certain  that  if  a  ten- 
ant, by  greatly  increased  industry  and  good  fortune,  made 
the  land  which  he  held  more  valuable  than  before,  his  rent 
would  at  once  be  increased.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  held 
an  act  of  tyranny  to  dispossess  him  so  long  as  he  made  even 
any  fair  promise  of  paying  up.  There  was,  therefore,  a  thor- 
oughly vicious  system  established  all  round,  demoralizing 
alike  to  the  landlord  and  the  tenant. 


278  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Underlying  all  the  relations  of  landlord  and  tenant  in 
Ireland  were  two  great  facts.  The  occupation  of  land  was 
virtually  a  necessity  of  life  to  the  Irish  tenant.  That  is  the 
first  fact.  The  second  is  that  the  land  system  under  which 
Ireland  was  placed  was  one  entirely  foreign  to  the  tradi- 
tions, the  ideas,  one  might  say  the  very  genius,  of  the  Irish 
people.  Whether  the  system  introduced  by  conquest  and 
confiscation  was  better  than  the  old  one  or  not  does  not  in 
the  slightest  degree  affect  the  working  of  this  fact  on  the 
relations  between  the  landlord  and  the  tenant  in  Ireland. 
No  one  will  be  able  to  understand  the  whole  meaning  and 
bearing  of  the  long  land  struggle  in  Ireland  who  does  not 
clearly  get  into  his  mind  the  fact  that,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
the  Irish  peasant  regarded  the  right  to  have  a  bit  of  land, 
his  share,  exactly  as  other  peoples  regard  the  right  to  live. 
It  was  in  his  mind  something  elementary  and  self-evident. 
He  could  not  be  loyal  to,  he  could  not  even  understand,  any 
system  which  did  not  secure  that  to  him.  According  to 
Michelet,  the  land  is  the  French  peasant's  mistress.  It  was 
the  Irish  peasant's  life. 

The  Irish  peasant,  with  his  wife  and  his  family,  lived  on 
the  potato.  Hardly  in  any  country  coming  within  the  pale 
of  civilization  was  there  to  be  found  a  whole  peasant  popu- 
lation dependent  for  their  living  on  one  single  root.  When 
the  potato  failed  in  1845  the  life-system  of  the  people  seem- 
ed to  have  given  way.  At  first  it  was  not  thought  that 
the  failure  must  necessarily  be  anything  more  than  partial. 
But  it  soon  began  to  appear  that  for  at  least  two  seasons 
the  whole  food  of  the  peasant  population  and  of  the  poor  in 
towns  was  absolutely  gone.  Lord  John  Russell's  Govern- 
ment pottered  with  the  difficulty  rather  than  encountered 
it.  In  their  excuse  it  has  to  be  said,  of  course,  that  the 
calamity  they  had  to  meet  was  unprecedented,  and  that  it 
must  have  tried  the  resources  of  the  most  energetic  and 
foreseeing  statesmanship.  Still,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
measures  of  the  Government  were  at  first  utterly  inadequate 
to  the  occasion,  and  that  afterward  some  of  them  were  even 
calculated  to  make  bad  worse.  Not  a  county  in  Ireland 
wholly  escaped  the  potato  disease,  and  many  of  the  south- 
ern and  western  counties  were  soon  in  actual  famine.  A 
peculiar  form  of  fever — famine-fever  it  was  called — began 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  ETC.  279 

to  show  itself  everywhere.  A  terrible  dysentery  set  in  as 
well.  In  some  districts  the  people  died  in  hundreds  daily 
from  fever,  dysentery,  or  sheer  starvation.  The  districts  of 
Skibbereen,  Skull,  Westport,  and  other  places  obtained  a 
ghastly  supremacy  in  misery.  In  some  of  these  districts 
the  parochial  authorities  at  last  declined  to  put  the  rate- 
payers to  the  expense  of  coffins  for  the  too  frequent  dead. 
The  coroners  declared  it  impossible  to  keep  on  holding  in- 
quests. There  was  no  time  for  all  the  ceremonies  of  that 
kind  that  would  have  to  be  gone  through  if  they  made  any 
pretence  at  keeping  up  the  system  of  ordinary  seasons.  In 
other  places  where  the  formula  was  still  kept  up  the  juries 
added  to  their  verdicts  of  death  by  starvation  some  chai'ge 
of  wilful  murder  against  Lord  John  Russell,  or  the  Lord- 
lieutenant,  or  some  other  official  whose  supposed  neglect 
was  set  down  as  the  cause  of  the  death.  Unfortunately  the 
Government  had  to  show  an  immense  activity  in  the  intro- 
duction of  coercion  bills  and  other  repressive  measures.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  that  in  such  a  country  as  Ire- 
land a  famine  of  that  gigantic  kind  should  set  in  without 
bringing  crimes  of  violence  along  with  it.  The  peasantry 
had  always  hated  the  land  tenure  system ;  they  had  always 
been  told,  not  surely  without  justice,  that  it  was  at  the  bot- 
tom of  all  their  miseries;  they  were  now  under  the  firm 
conviction  that  the  Government  could  have  saved  them  if  it 
would.  What  wonder,  then,  if  there  were  bread  riots  and 
agrarian  disturbances?  Who  can  now  wonder,  that  being 
so,  that  the  Government  introduced  exceptional  measures 
of  repression  ?  But  it  certainly  had  a  grim  and  a  disheart- 
ening effect  on  the  spirits  of  the  Irish  people  when  it  seemed 
as  if  the  Government  could  only  potter  and  palter  with  fam- 
ine, but  could  be  earnest  and  energetic  when  devising  coer- 
cion bills. 

Whatever  might  be  said  of  the  Government,  no  one  could 
doubt  the  good-will  of  the  English  people.  In  every  great 
English  community,  from  the  metropolis  downward,  sub- 
scription lists  were  opened,  and  the  most  liberal  contribu- 
tions poured  in.  In  Liverpool,  for  example,  a  great  number 
of  the  merchants  of  the  place  put  down  a  thousand  pounds 
each.  The  Quakers  of  England  sent  over  a  delegation  of 
their  number  to  the  specially  famine -stricken  districts  of 


280  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Ireland  to  administer  relief.  Many  other  sects  and  bodies 
followed  the  example.  National  Relief  Associations  were 
specially  formed  in  England.  Relief,  indeed,  began  to  be 
poured  in  from  all  countries.  The  United  States  employed 
some  of  their  war  vessels  to  send  gifts  of  grain  and  other 
food  to  the  starving  places.  In  one  Irish  seaport  the  joy- 
bells  of  the  town  were  kept  ringing  all  day  in  honor  of  the 
arrival  of  one  of  these  grain -laden  vessels  —  a  mournfully 
significant  form  of  rejoicing,  surely.  One  of  the  national 
writers  said  at  the  time  that  the  misery  of  Ireland  touched 
"even  the  heart  of  the  Turk  at  the  far  Dardanelles,  and  he 
sent  her  in  pity  the  alms  of  a  beggar."  It  was  true  that 
from  Turkey,  as  from  most  other  countries,  had  come  some 
contribution  toward  the  relief  of  Irish  distress.  At  the 
same  time  there  were  some  very  foolish  performances  gone 
through  in  Dublin  under  the  sanction  and  patronage  of  the 
Lord-lieutenant  —  the  solemn  "inauguration,"  as  it  would 
be  called  by  a  certain  class  of  writers  now,  of  a  public  soup- 
kitchen,  devised  and  managed  by  the  fashionable  French 
cook  M.  Soyer,  for  the  purpose  of  showing  the  Irish  people 
what  remarkably  sustaining  potage  might  be  made  out  of 
the  thinnest  and  cheapest  materials.  This  exposition  would 
have  been  well  enough  in  a  quiet  and  practical  way,  but 
performed  as  a  grand  national  ceremony  of  regeneration, 
under  the  patronage  of  the  Viceroy,  and  with  accompani- 
ment of  brass -bands  and  pageantry,  it  had  a  remarkably 
foolish  and  even  offensive  aspect.  The  performance  was  re- 
sented bitterly  by  many  of  the  impatient  young  spirits  of 
the  national  party  in  Dublin. 

Meanwhile  the  misery  went  on  deepening  and  broaden- 
ing. It  was  far  too  great  to  be  effectually  encountered 
by  subscriptions,  however  generous ;  and  the  Government, 
meaning  to  do  the  best  they  could,  were  practically  at  their 
wits'  end.  The  starving  peasants  streamed  into  the  nearest 
considerable  town  hoping  for  relief  there,  and  found  too 
often  that  there  the  very  sources  of  charity  were  dried  up. 
Many,  very  many,  thus  disappointed,  merely  lay  down  on 
the  pavement  and  died  there.  Along  the  country  roads  one 
met  everywhere  groups  of  gaunt,  dim-eyed  wretches  clad  in 
miserable  old  sacking,  and  wandering  aimlessly  with  some 
vague  idea  of  finding  food,  as  the  boy  in  the  fable  hoped  to 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TKOUBLE,  ETC.  281 

find  the  gold  where  the  rainbow  touched  the  earth.  Many 
remained  in  their  empty  hovels,  and  took  death  there  when 
he  came.  In  some  regions  the  country  seemed  unpeopled 
for  miles.  A  fervid  national  writer  declared  that  the  im- 
pression made  on  him  by  the  aspect  of  the  country  then  was 
that  of  "  one  silent,  vast  dissolution."  Allowing  for  rhet- 
oric, there  was  not  much  exaggeration  in  the  words.  Cer- 
tainly the  Ireland  of  tradition  was  dissolved  in  the  opera- 
tion of  that  famine.  The  old  system  gave  way  utterly. 
The  landlordism  of  the  days  before  the  famine  never  revived 
in  its  former  strength  and  its  peculiar  ways.  For  the  land- 
lord class  there  came  out  of  the  famine  the  Encumbered 
Estates  Court ;  for  the  small  farmer  and  peasant  class  there 
floated  up  the  American  emigrant  ship. 

Acts  and  even  conspiracies  of  violence,  as  we  have  said, 
began  to  be  not  uncommon  throughout  the  country  and  in 
the  cities.  One  peculiar  symptom  of  the  time  was  the  glass- 
breaking  mania  that  set  in  throughout  the  towns  of  the 
south  and  west.  It  is,  perhaps,  not  quite  reasonable  to  call 
it  a  mania,  for  it  had  melancholy  method  in  it.  The  work- 
houses were  overcrowded,  and  the  authorities  could  not  re- 
ceive there  or  feed  there  one-fourth  of  the  applicants  who 
besieged  them.  Suddenly  it  seemed  to  occur  to  the  minds 
of  many  of  famine's  victims  that  there  were  the  prisons  for 
which  one  might  qualify  himself,  and  to  which,  after  quali- 
fication, he  could  not  be  denied  admittance.  The  idea  was 
simple:  go  into  a  town,  smash  deliberately  the  windows  of 
a  shop,  and  some  days  of  a  jail  and  of  substantial  food  must 
follow.  The  plan  became  a  favorite.  Especially  was  it 
adopted  by  young  girls  and  women.  After  a  time  the  puz- 
zled magistrates  resolved  to  put  an  end  to  this  device  by 
refusing  to  inflict  the  punishment  which  these  unfortunate 
creatures  sought  as  a  refuge  and  a  comfort.  One  early  re- 
sult of  the  famine  and  the  general  breakdown  of  property 
is  too  significant  to  be  allowed  to  pass  unnoticed.  Some  of 
the  landlords  had  been  living  for  a  long  time  on  a  baseless 
system,  on  a  credit  which  the  failure  of  the  crops  brought 
to  a  crushing  test.  Not  a  few  of  these  were  utterly  broken. 
They  could  maintain  their  houses  and  halls  no  longer,  and 
often  were  only  too  happy  to  let  them  to  the  poor-law 
guardians  to  be  used  as  extra  workhouses.  In  the  near 


282  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

neighborhood  of  many  a  distressed  country  town  the  great 
house  of  the  local  magnate  thus  became  a  receptacle  for  the 
pauperism  which  could  not  find  a  refuge  in  the  overcrowd- 
ed asylums  which  the  poor-law  system  had  already  pro- 
vided. The  lion  and  the  lizard,  says  the  Persian  poet,  keep 
the  halls  where  Jamshyd  gloried  and  drank  deep.  The  pau- 
per devoured  his  scanty  dole  of  Indian  meal  porridge  in  the 
hall  where  his  landlord  had  gloried  and  drunk  deep. 

When  the  famine  was  over  and  its  results  came  to  be  es- 
timated, it  was  found  that  Ireland  had  lost  about  two  mill- 
ions of  her  population.  She  had  come  down  from  eight 
millions  to  six.  This  was  the  combined  effect  of  starvation, 
of  the  various  diseases  that  followed  in  its  path  gleaning 
where  it  had  failed  to  gather,  and  of  emigration.  Long  af- 
ter all  the  direct  effects  of  the  failure  of  the  potato  had 
ceased,  the  population  still  continued  steadily  to  decrease 
The  Irish  peasant  had  in  fact  had  his  eyes  turned,  as  Mr. 
Bright  afterward  expressed  it,  toward  the  setting  sun,  and 
for  long  years  the  stream  of  emigration  westward  never 
abated  in  its  volume.  A  new  Ireland  began  to  grow  up 
across  the  Atlantic.  In  every  great  city  of  the  United 
States  the  Irish  element  began  to  form  a  considerable  con- 
stituent of  the  population.  From  New  York  to  San  Fran- 
cisco, from  St.  Paul,  Minnesota,  to  New  Orleans,  the  Irish  ac- 
cent is  heard  in  every  street,  and  the  Irish  voter  comes  to 
the  polling-booth  ready,  far  too  heedlessly,  to  vote  for  any 
politician  who  will  tell  him  that  America  loves  the  green 
flag  and  hates  the  Saxon. 

Terrible  as  the  immediate  effects  of  the  famine  were,  it  is 
impossible  for  any  friend  of  Ireland  to  say  that,  on  the  whole, 
it  did  not  bring  much  good  with  it.  It  first  applied  the 
scourge  which  was  to  drive  out  of  the  land  a  thoroughly 
vicious  and  rotten  system.  It  first  called  the  attention  of 
English  statesmen  irresistibly  to  the  fact  that  the  system 
was  bad  to  its  heart's  core,  and  that  nothing  good  could 
come  of  it.  It  roused  the  attention  of  the  humble  Irishman, 
too  often  inclined  to  put  up  with  everything  in  the  lazy  spir- 
it of  a  Neapolitan  or  a  fatalist,  to  the  fact  that  there  was  for 
him  too  a  world  elsewhere.  The  famine  had,  indeed,  many 
a  bloody  after-birth,  but  it  gave  to  the  world  a  new  Ireland. 

The  Government,  as  it  may  be  supposed,  had  hard  work 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL   TROUBLE,  ETC.  283 

to  do  all  this  time.  They  had  the  best  intentions  toward 
Ireland,  and  were  always,  indeed,  announcing  that  they  had 
found  out  some  new  way  of  dealing  with  the  distress,  and 
modifying  or  withdrawing  old  plans.  They  adopted  meas- 
ures from  time  to  time  to  expend  large  sums  in  something 
like  systematic  employment  for  the  poor  in  Ireland ;  they 
modified  the  Irish  Poor-laws ;  they  agreed  at  length  to  sus- 
pend temporarily  the  Corn-laws  and  the  Navigation  Laws, 
so  far  as  these  related  to  the  importation  of  grain.  A  tre- 
mendous commercial  panic,  causing  the  fall  of  great  houses, 
especially  in  the  corn  trade,  all  over  the  country,  called  for 
the  suspension  of  the  Bank  Charter  Act  of  1844,  and  the 
measures  of  the  ministers  were,  for  the  most  part,  treated 
considerately  and  loyally  by  Sir  Robert  Peel ;  but  a  new 
opposition  had  formed  itself  under  the  nominal  guidance  of 
Lord  George  Bentinck,  and  the  real  inspiration  of  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli. Lord  George  Bentinck  brought  in  a  bill  to  make  a 

o  o 

grant  of  sixteen  millions  to  be  expended  as  an  advance  on 
the  construction  and  completion  of  Irish  railways.  This 
proposal  was  naturally  very  welcome  to  many  in  Ireland. 
It  had  a  lavish  and  showy  air  about  it;  and  Lord  George 
Bentinck  talked  grandiosely  in  his  speech  about  the  readi- 
ness with  which  he,  the  Saxon,  would,  if  his  measure  were 
•carried,  answer  with  his  head  for  the  loyalty  of  the  Irish 
people.  But  it  soon  began  to  appear  that  the  scheme  was 
not  so  much  a  question  of  the  Irish  people  as  of  certain  mon- 
eyed classes  who  might  be  helped  along  at  the  expense  of 
the  English  and  the  Irish  people.  Lord  George  Bentinck 
certainly  had  no  other  than  a  direct  and  single-minded  pur- 
pose to  do  good  to  Ireland ;  but  his  measure  would  have 
been  a  failure  if  it  had  been  carried.  It  was  fairly  open  in 
some  respects  to  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Roebuck,  that  it  pro- 
posed to  relieve  Irish  landlordism  of  its  responsibilities  at 
the  expense  of  the  British  tax-payer.  The  measure  was  re- 
jected. Lord  George  Bentinck  was  able  to  worry  the  min- 
istry somewhat  effectively  when  they  introduced  a  measure 
to  reduce  gradually  the  differential  duties  on  sugar  for  a  few 
years,  and  then  replace  these  duties  by  a  fixed  and  uniform 
rate.  This  was,  in  short,  a  proposal  to  apply  the  principle 
of  Free-trade,  instead  of  that  of  Protection,  to  sugar.  The 
protective  principle  had,  in  this  case,  however,  a  certain  fas- 


284  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

cination  about  it,  even  for  independent  minds ;  for  an  excep- 
tional protection  had  been  retained  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  in 
order  to  enable  the  planters  in  our  colonies  to  compensate 
themselves  for  the  loss  they  might  suffer  in  the  transition 
from  slavery  to  free  labor.  Lord  George  Bentinck,  there- 
fore, proposed  an  amendment  to  the  resolutions  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, declaring  it  unjust  and  impolitic  to  reduce  the  duty 
on  foreign  slave-grown  sugar,  as  tending  to  check  the  ad- 
vance of  production  by  British  free  labor,  and  to  give  a  great 
additional  stimulus  to  slave  labor.  Many  sincere  and  inde- 
pendent opponents  of  slavery,  Lord  Brougham  in  the  House 
of  Lords  among  them,  were  caught  by  this  view  of  the  ques- 
tion. Lord  George  and  his  brilliant  lieutenant  at  one  time 
appeared  as  if  they  were  likely  to  carry  their  point  in  the 
Commons.  But  it  was  announced  that  if  the  resolutions  of 
the  Government  were  defeated  ministers  would  resign,  and 
there  was  no  one  to  take  their  place.  Peel  could  not  return 
to  power;  and  the  time  was  far  distant  yet  when  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli could  form  a  ministry.  The  opposition  crumbled  away, 
therefore,  and  the  Government  measures  were  carried.  Lord 
George  Bentinck  made  himself  for  awhile  the  champion  of 
the  West  India  sugar-producing  interest.  He  was  a  man 
who  threw  himself  with  enormous  energy  into  any  work  he 
undertook;  and  he  had  got  up  the  case  of  the  West  India 
planters  with  all  the  enthusiasm  that  inspired  him  in  his 
more  congenial  pursuits  as  one  of  the  principal  men  on  the 
turf.  The  alliance  between  him  and  Mr.  Disraeli  is  curious. 
The  two  men,  one  would  think,  could  have  had  absolutely 
nothing  in  common.  Mr.  Disraeli  knew  nothing  about  horses 
and  racing.  Lord  George  Bentinck  could  not  possibly  have 
understood,  not  to  say  sympathized  with,  many  of  the  lead- 
ing ideas  of  his  lieutenant.  Yet  Bentinck  had  evidently 
formed  a  just  estimate  of  Disraeli's  political  genius;  and  Dis- 
raeli saw  that  in  Bentinck  were  many  of  the  special  qualities 
which  go  to  make  a  powerful  party  leader  in  England.  Time 
has  amply  justified,  and  more  than  justified,  Bentinck's  con- 
victions as  to  Disraeli;  Bentinck's  premature  death  leaves 
Disraeli's  estimate  of  him  an  untested  speculation. 

There  were  troubles  abroad  as  well  as  at  home  for  the 
Government.  Almost  immediately  on  their  coming  into 
office,  the  project  of  the  Spanish  marriages,  concocted  be- 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  ETC.  285 

tween  King  Louis  Philippe  and  his  minister,  M.  Guizot,  dis- 
turbed for  a  time,  and  very  seriously,  the  good  understand- 
ing between  England  and  France.  It  might,  so  far  as  this 
country  was  concerned,  have  had  much  graver  consequences, 
but  for  the  fact  that  it  bore  its  bitter  fruit  so  soon  for  the 
dynasty  of  Louis  Philippe,  and  helped  to  put  a  new  ruler  on 
the  throne  of  France.  It  is  only  as  it  affected  the  friendly 
feeling  between  this  country  and  France  that  the  question 
of  the  Spanish  marriages  has  a  place  in  such  a  work  as  this; 
but  at  one  time  it  seemed  likely  enough  to  bring  about  con- 
sequences which  would  link  it  closely  and  directly  with  the 
history  of  England.  The  ambition  of  the  French  minister 
and  his  master  was  to  bring  the  throne  of  Spain  in  some 
way  under  the  direct  influence  of  France.  Such  a  scheme 
had  again  and  again  been  at  the  heart  of  French  rulers  and 
statesmen,  and  it  had  always  failed.  At  least  it  had  always 
brought  with  it  jealousy,  hostility,  and  war.  Louis  Philippe 
and  his  minister  were  untaught  by  the  lessons  of  the  past. 
The  young  Queen  Isabella  of  Spain  was  unmarried,  and  of 
course  a  high  degree  of  public  anxiety  existed  in  Europe  as 
to  her  choice  of  a  husband.  No  delusion  can  be  more  pro- 
found or  more  often  exposed  than  that  which  inspires  am- 
bitious princes  and  enterprising  statesmen  to  imagine  that 
they  can  control  nations  by  the  influence  of  dynastic  alli- 
ances. In  every  European  war  we  see  princes  closely  con- 
nected by  marriage  in  arms  against  each  other.  The  great 
political  forces  which  bring  nations  into  the  field  of  battle 
are  not  to  be  charmed  into  submission  by  the  rubbing  of  a 
princess's  wedding-ring.  But  a  certain  class  of  statesman, 
n  man  of  the  order  who  in  ordinary  life  would  be  called  too 
clever  by  half,  is  always  intriguing  about  royal  marriages, 
as  if  thus  alone  he  could  hold  in  his  hands  the  destinies  of 
nations. 

In  an  evil  hour  for  themselves  and  their  fame,  Louis 
Philippe  and  his  minister  believed  that  they  could  obtain 
a  virtual  ownership  of  Spain  by  an  ingenious  marriage 
scheme.  There  was  at  one  time  a  project,  talked  of  rather 
than  actually  entertained,  of  marrying  the  young  Queen  of 
Spain  and  her  sister  to  the  Due  d'Aumale  and  the  Due  de 
Montpensier,  both  sons  of  Louis  Philippe.  But  this  would 
have  been  too  daring  a  venture  on  the  part  of  the  King  of 


286  A  HISTOKY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  French.  Apart  from  any  objections  to  be  entertained 
by  other  states,  it  was  certain  that  England  could  not  "  view 
with  indifference,"  as  the  diplomatic  phrase  goes,  the  pros- 
pect of  a  son  of  the  French  King  occupying  the  throne  of 
Spain.  It  may  be  said  that  after  all  it  was  of  little  concern 
to  England  who  married  the  Queen  of  Spain.  Spain  was 
nothing  to  us.  It  would  not  follow  that  Spain  must  be  the 
tool  of  France  because  the  Spanish  Queen  married  a  son  of 
the  French  King,  any  more  than  it  was  certain  in  a  former 
day  that  Austria  must  link  herself  with  the  fortunes  of  the 
great  Napoleon  because  he  had  married  an  Austrian  princess. 
Probably  it  would  have  been  well  if  England  had  concerned 
herself  in  nowise  with  the  domestic  affairs  of  Spain,  and  had 
allowed  Louis  Philippe  to  spin  what  ignoble  plots  he  pleased, 
if  the  Spanish  people  themselves  had  not  wit  enough  to  see 
through  and  power  enough  to  counteract  them.  At  a  later 
period  France  brought  on  herself  a  terrible  war  and  a  crush- 
ing defeat  because  her  Emperor  chose  to  believe,  or  allowed 
himself  to  be  persuaded  into  believing,  that  the  security  of 
France  would  be  threatened  if  a  Prussian  prince  were  called 
to  the  throne  of  Spain.  The  Prussian  prince  did  not  ascend 
that  throne ;  but  the  war  between  France  and  Prussia  went 
on ;  France  was  defeated ;  and  after  a  little  the  Spanish 
people  themselves  got  rid  of  the  prince  whom  they  had  con- 
sented to  accept  in  place  of  the  obnoxious  Prussian.  If  the 
French  Emperor  had  not  interfered,  it  is  only  too  probable 
that  the  Prussian  prince  would  have  gone  to  Madrid,  reigned 
there  for  a  few  unstable  and  tremulous  months,  and  then 
have  been  quietly  sent  back  to  his  own  country.  But  at 
the  time  of  Louis  Philippe's  intrigues  about  the  Spanish 
marriages  the  statesmen  of  England  were  by  no  means  dis- 
posed to  take  a  cool  and  philosophic  view  of  things.  The 
idea  of  non-intervention  had  scarcely  come  up  then,  and  the 
English  minister  who  was  chiefly  concerned  in  foreign  affairs 
was  about  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  admit  that  anything 
could  go  on  in  Europe  or  elsewhere  in  which  England  was 
not  entitled  to  express  an  opinion,  and  to  make  her  influence 
felt.  The  marriage,  therefore,  of  the  young  Queen  of  Spain 
had  been  long  a  subject  of  anxious  consideration  in  the 
councils  of  the  English  Government.  Louis  Philippe  knew 
very  well  that  he  could  not  venture  to  marry  one  of  his  sons 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  ETC.  287 

to  the  young  Isabella.  But  he  and  his  minister  devised  a 
scheme  for  securing  to  themselves  and  their  policy  the  same 
effect  in  another  way.  They  contrived  that  the  Queen  and 
her  sister  should  be  married  at  the  same  time — the  Queen 
to  her  cousin,  Don  Francisco  d'Assis,  Duke  of  Cadiz ;  and 
her  sister  to  the  Duke  de  Montpensier,  Louis  Philippe's  -son. 
There  was  reason  to  expect  that  the  Queen,  if  married  to 
Don  Francisco,  would  have  no  children,  and  that  the  wife  of 
Louis  Philippe's  son,  or  some  of  her  children,  would  come  to 
the  throne  of  Spain. 

On  the  moral  guilt  of  a  plot  like  this  it  would  be  super- 
fluous to  dwell.  Nothing  in  the  history  of  the  perversions 
of  human  conscience  and  judgment  can  be  more  extraordi- 
nary than  the  fact  that  a  man  like  M.  Guizot  should  have 
been  its  inspiring  influence.  It  came  with  a  double  shock 
upon  the  Queen  of  England  and  her  ministers,  because  they 
had  every  reason  to  think  that  Louis  Philippe  had  bound 
himself  by  a  solemn  promise  to  discourage  any  such  policy. 
When  the  Queen  paid  her  visit  to  Louis  Philippe  at  Eu, 
the  King  made  the  most  distinct  and  the  most  spontaneous 
promise  on  the  subject  both  to  her  Majesty  and  to  Lord 
Aberdeen.  The  Queen's  own  journal  says :  "  The  King  told 
Lord  Aberdeen  as  well  as  me  he  never  would  hear  of  Mont- 
pensier's  marriage  with  the  Infanta  of  Spain — which  they  are 
in  a  great  fright  about  in  England — until  it  was  no  longer  a 
political  question,  which  would  be  when  the  Queen  is  mar- 
ried and  has  children."  The  King's  own  defence  of  himself 
afterward,  in  a  letter  intended  to  be  a  reply  to  one  written 
to  his  daughter,  the  Queen  of  the  Belgians,  by  Queen  Vic- 
toria, admits  the  fact.  "  I  shall  tell  you  precisely,"  he  says, 
"  in  what  consists  the  deviation  on  my  side.  Simply  in  my 
having  arranged  for  the  marriage  of  the  Due  de  Montpen- 
sier, not  before  the  marriage  of  the  Queen  of  Spain,  for  she 
is  to  be  married  to  the  Due  de  Cadiz  at  the  very  moment 
when  my  son  is  married  to  the  Infanta,  but  before  the  Queen 
has  a  child.  That  is  the  whole  deviation,  nothing  more, 
nothing  less."  This  was  surely  deviation  enough  from  the 
King's  promise  to  justify  any  charge  of  bad  faith  that  could 
be  made.  The  whole  question  was  one  of  succession.  The 
objection  of  England  and  other  Powers  was,  from  first  to 
last,  an  objection  to  any  arrangement  which  might  leave 


288  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  succession  to  one  of  Louis  Philippe's  children  or  grand- 
children. For  this  reason  the  King  had  given  his  word  to 
Queen  Victoria  that  he  would  not  hear  of  his  son's  marriage 
with  Isabella's  sister  until  the  difficulty  about  the  succession 
had  been  removed  by  Isabella  herself  being  married  and 
having  a  child.  Such  an  agreement  was  absolutely  broken 
when  the  King  arranged  for  the  marriage  of  his  son  to  the 
sister  of  Queen  Isabella  at  the  same  time  as  Isabella's  own 
marriage,  and  when,  therefore,  it  was  not  certain  that  the 
young  Queen  would  have  any  children.  The  political  ques- 
tion— the  question  of  succession — remained  then  open  as  be- 
fore. All  the  objections  that  England  and  other  Powers 
had  to  the  marriage  of  the  Due  de  Montpensier  stood  out  as 
strong  as  ever.  It  was  a  question  of  the  birth  of  a  child, 
and  no  child  was  born.  The  breach  of  faith  was  made  in- 
finitely more  grave  by  the  fact  that  in  the  public  opinion  of 
Europe  Louis  Philippe  was  set  down  as  having  brought 
about  the  marriage  of  the  Queen  of  Spain  with  her  cousin 
Don  Francisco  in  the  hope  and  belief  that  the  union  would 
be  barren  of  issue,  and  that  the  wife  of  his  son  would  stand 
on  the  next  step  of  the  throne. 

The  excuse  which  Louis  Philippe  put  forward  to  palliate 
what  he  called  his  "deviation"  from  the  promise  to  the 
Queen  was  not  of  a  nature  calculated  to  allay  the  ill  feeling 
which  his  policy  had  aroused  in  England.  He  pleaded  in 
substance  that  he  had  reason  to  believe  in  an  intended  piece 
of  treachery  on  the  part  of  the  English  Government,  the 
consequences  of  which,  if  it  were  successful,  would  have 
been  injurious  to  his  policy,  and  the  discovery  of  which, 
therefore,  released  him  from  his  promise.  He  had  found 
out,  as  he  declared,  that  there  was  an  intention  on  the  part 
of  England  to  put  forward,  as  a  candidate  for  the  hand  of 
Queen  Isabella,  Prince  Leopold  of  Coburg,  a  cousin  of  Prince 
Albert.  There  was  so  little  justification  for  any  such  sus- 
picion that  it  hardly  s'eemed  possible  a  man  of  Louis  Phi- 
lippe's shrewdness  can  really  have  entertained  it.  The  Eng- 
lish Government  had  always  steadfastly  declined  to  give 
any  support  whatever  to  the  candidature  of  this  young 
prince.  Lord  Aberdeen,  who  was  then  Foreign  Secretary, 
had  always  taken  his  stand  on  the  broad  principle  that  the 
marriage  of  the  Queen  of  Spain  was  the  business  of  Isabella 


FAMINE,  COMMERCIAL  TROUBLE,  ETC.  289 

herself  and  of  the  Spanish  people;  and  that  so  long  as  that 
Queen  and  that  people  were  satisfied,  and  the  interests  of 
England  were  in  nowise  involved,  the  Government  of  Queen 
Victoria  would  interfere  in  no  manner.  The  candidature  of 
Prince  Leopold  had  been,  in  the  first  instance,  a  project  of  the 
Dowager  Queen  of  Spain,  Christina,  a  woman  of  intriguing 
character,  on  whose  political  probity  no  great  reliance  could 
be  placed.  The  English  Government  had  in  the  most  de- 
cided and  practical  manner  proved  that  they  took  no  share 
in  the  plans  of  Queen  Christina,  and  had  no  sympathy  with 
them.  But  while  the  whole  negotiations  were  going  on,  the 
defeat  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  Ministry  brought  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  into  the  Foreign  Office  in  place  of  Lord  Aberdeen.  The 
very  name  of  Palmerston  produced  on  Louis  Philippe  and 
his  minister  the  effect  vulgarly  said  to  be  wrought  on  a 
bull  by  the  display  of  a  red  rag.  Louis  Philippe  treasured 
in  bitter  memory  the  unexpected  success  which  Palmerston 
had  won  from  him  in  regard  to  Turkey  and  Egypt.  At 
that  time,  and  especially  in  the  court  of  Louis  Philippe,  for- 
eign politics  were  looked  upon  as  the  field  in  which  the 
ministers  of  great  Powers  contended  against  each  other 
with  brag  and  trickery  and  subtle  arts  of  all  kinds ;  the 
plain  principles  of  integrity  and  truthful  dealing  did  not 
seem  to  be  regarded  as  properly  belonging  to  the  rules  of 
the  game.  Louis  Philippe  probably  believed  in  good  faith 
that  the  return  of  Lord  Palmerston  to  the  Foreign  Office 
must  mean  the  renewed  activity  of  treacherous  plans  against 
himself.  This,  at  least,  is  the  only  assumption  on  which  we 
can  explain  the  King's  conduct,  if  we  do  not  wish  to  believe 
that  he  put  forward  excuses  and  pretexts  which  were  wilful 
in  their  falsehood.  Louis  Philippe  seized  on  some  words  in 
a  despatch  of  Lord  Palmerston's,  in  which  the  candidature 
of  Prince  Leopold  was  simply  mentioned  as  a  matter  of  fact ; 
declared  that  these  words  showed  that  the  English  Govern- 
ment had  at  last  openly  adopted  that  candidature,  professed 
himself  relieved  from  all  previous  engagements,  and  at  once 
hurried  on  the  marriage  between  Queen  Isabella  and  her 
cousin,  and  that  of  his  own  son  with  Isabella's  sister.  On 
October  10th,  1846,  the  double  marriage  took  place  at  Ma- 
drid ;  and  on  February  5th  following,  M.  Guizot  told  the 
French  Chambers  that  the  Spanish  marriages  constituted 
I.— 13 


290  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  first  great  thing  France  had  accomplished  completely 
single-handed  in  Europe  since  1830. 

Every  one  knows  what  a  failure  this  scheme  proved,  so 
far  as  the  objects  of  Louis  Philippe  and  his  minister  were 
concerned.  Queen  Isabella  had  children  ;  Montpensier's  wife 
did  not  come  to  the  throne;  and  the  dynasty  of  Louis  Phi- 
lippe fell  before  long,  its  fall  undoubtedly  hastened  by  the 
position  of  utter  isolation  and  distrust  in  which  it  was  placed 
by  the  scheme  of  the  Spanish  marriages  and  the  feelings 
which  it  provoked  in  Europe.  The  fact  with  which  we  have 
to  deal,  however,  is  that  the  friendship  between  England  and 
France,  from  which  so  many  happy  results  seemed  likely  to 
come  to  Europe  and  the  cause  of  free  government,  was  nec- 
essarily interrupted.  It  would  have  been  impossible  to  trust 
any  longer  to  Louis  Philippe.  The  Queen  herself  entered  into 
a  correspondence  with  his  daughter,  the  Queen  of  the  Bel- 
gians, in  which  she  expressed  in  the  clearest  and  most  em- 
phatic manner  her  opinion  of  the  treachery  with  which  Eng- 
land had  been  encountered,  and  suggested  plainly  enough  her 
sense  of  the  moral  wrong  involved  in  such  ignoble  policy. 
The  whole  transaction  is  but  another  and  a  most  striking 
condemnation  of  that  odious  creed,  for  a  long  time  tolerated 
in  state-craft,  that  there  is  one  moral  code  for  private  life  and 
another  for  the  world  of  politics.  A  man  who  in  private 
affairs  should  act  as  Louis  Philippe  and  M.  Guizot  acted 
would  be  justly  considered  infamous.  It  is  impossible  to 
suppose  that  M.  Guizot,  at  least,  could  have  so  acted  in  pri- 
vate life.  M.  Guizot  was  a  Protestant  of  a  peculiarly  austere 
type,  who  professed  to  make  religious  duty  his  guide  in  all 
things,  and  who  doubtless  did  make  it  so  in  all  his  dealings 

O      t  O 

as  a  private  citizen.  But  it  is  only  too  evident  that  he  be- 
lieved the  policy  of  states  to  allow  of  other  principles  than 
those  of  Christian  morality.  He  allowed  himself  to  be  gov- 
erned by  the  odious  delusion  that  the  interests  of  a  state 
can  be  advanced  and  ought  to  be  pursued  by  means  which 
an  ordinary  man  of  decent  character  would  scorn  to  employ 
for  any  object  in  private  life.  A  man  of  any  high  principle 
would  not  employ  such  arts  in  private  life  to  save  all  his 
earthly  possessions,  and  his  life  and  the  lives  of  his  wife  and 
children.  Any  one  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  think  over 
the  whole  of  this  plot  —  for  it  can  be  called  by  no  other 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.  291 

name  —  over  the  ignoble  object  which  it  had  in  view,  the 
base  means  by  which  it  was  carried  out,  the  ruthless  disre- 
gard for  the  inclinations,  the  affections,  the  happiness,  and 
the  morality  of  its  principal  victims ;  and  will  then  think  of 
it  as  carried  on  in  private  life  in  order  to  come  at  the  re- 
version of  some  young  and  helpless  girl's  inheritance,  will 
perhaps  find  it  hard  to  understand  how  the  shame  can  be 
any  the  less  because  the  principal  plotter  was  a  king,  and 
the  victims  were  a  queen  and  a  nation. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

CHARTISM   AND    YOUNG   IRELAND. 

THE  year  1848  was  an  era  in  the  modern  history  of  Eu- 
rope. It  was  the  year  of  unfulfilled  revolutions.  The  fall 
of  the  dynasty  of  Louis  Philippe  may  be  said  to  have  set 
the  revolutionary  tide  flowing.  The  event  in  France  had 
long  been  anticipated  by  keen-eyed  observers.  There  are 
many  predictions,  delivered  and  recorded  before  the  revo- 
lution was  yet  near,  which  show  that  it  ought  not  to  have 
taken  the  world  by  surprise.  The  reign  of  the  Bourgeois 
King  was  unsuited  in  its  good  and  in  its  bad  qualities  alike 
to  the  genius  and  the  temper  of  the  French  people.  The 
people  of  France  have  defects  enough  which  friends  and  en- 
emies are  ready  to  point  out  to  them;  but  it  can  hardly  be 
denied  that  they  like  at  least  the  appearance  of  «i  certain 
splendor  and  magnanimity  in  their  systems  of  government. 
This  is,  indeed,  one  of  their  weaknesses.  It  lays  them  open 
to  the  allurements  of  any  brilliant  adventurer,  like  the  First 
Napoleon  or  the  Third,  who  can  promise  them  national 
greatness  and  glory  at  the  expense  perhaps  of  domestic  lib- 
erty. But  it  makes  them  peculiarly  intolerant  of  anything 
mean  and  sordid  in  a  system  or  a  ruler.  There  are  peoples, 
no  doubt,  who  could  be  persuaded,  and  wisely  persuaded,  to 
put  up  with  a  good  deal  of  the  ignoble  and  the  shabby  in 
their  foreign  policy  for  the  sake  of  domestic  comfort  and 
tranquillity.  But  the  French  people  are  always  impatient 
of  anything  like  meanness  in  their  rulers,  and  the  govern- 
ment of  Louis  Philippe  was  especially  mean.  Its  foreign 


292  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

policy  was  treacherous ;  its  diplomatists  were  commissioned 
to  act  as  tricksters ;  the  word  of  a  French  minister  at  a  for- 
eign court  began  to  be  regarded  as  on  a  level  of  credibility 
with  a  dicer's  oath.  The  home  policy  of  the  King  was  nar- 
row-minded and  repressive  enough ;  but  a  man  who  played 
upon  the  national  weakness  more  wisely  might  have  per- 
suaded his  people  to  be  content  with  defects  at  home  for 
the  sake  of  prestige  abroad.  From  the  hour  when  it  be- 
came apparent  in  France  that  the  nation  was  not  respected 
abroad,  the  fall  of  the  dynasty  was  only  a  matter  of  time 
and  change.  The  terrible  story  of  the  De  Praslin  family 
helped  to  bring  about  the  catastrophe ;  the  alternate  weak- 
ness and  obstinacy  of  the  Government  forced  it  on;  and  the 
King's  own  lack  of  decision  made  it  impossible  that  when 
the  trial  had  come  it  could  end  in  any  way  but  one. 

Louis  Philippe  fled  to  England,  and  his  flight  was  the 
signal  for  long  pent-up  fires  to  break  out  all  over  Europe. 
Revolution  soon  was  aflame  over  nearly  all  the  courts  and 
capitals  of  the  Continent.  Revolution  is  like  an  epidemic ; 
it  finds  out  the  weak  places  in  systems.  The  two  European 
countries  which,  being  tried  by  it,  stood  it  best,  were  Eng- 
land and  Belgium.  In  the  latter  country  the  King  made 
frank  appeal  to  his  people,  and  told  them  that  if  they  wish- 
ed to  be  rid  of  him  he  was  quite  willing  to  go.  Language 
of  this  kind  is  new  in  the  mouths  of  sovereigns;  and  the 
Belgians  are  a  people  well  able  to  appreciate  it.  They  de- 
clared for  their  King,  and  the  shock  of  the  revolution  pass- 
ed harmlessly  away.  In  England  and  Ireland  the  effect 
of  the  events  in  France  was  instantly  made  manifest.  The 
Chartist  agitation  at  once  came  to  a  head.  Some  of  the 
Chartist  leaders  called  out  for  the  dismissal  of  the  ministry, 
the  dissolution  of  the  Parliament,  the  Charter  and  "  no  sur- 
render." A  national  convention  of  Chartists  began  its  sit- 
tings in  London  to  arrange  for  a  monster  demonstration  on 
April  10th.  Some  of  the  speakers  openly  declared  that  the 
people  were  now  quite  ready  to  fight  for  their  Charter. 
Others,  more  cautious,  advised  that  no  step  should  be  taken 
against  the  law  until  at  least  it  was  quite  certain  that  the 
people  were  stronger  than  the  upholders  of  the  existing 
laws.  Nearly  all  the  leading  Chartists  spoke  of  the  revolu- 
tion in  France  as  an  example  offered  in  good  time  to  the 


CHARTISM  AND   YOUNG  IRELAND.  293 

English  people;  and  it  is  somewhat  curious  to  observe  how 
it  was  assumed  in  the  most  evident  good  faith  that  what 
we  may  call  the  wage-receiving  portion  of  the  population 
of  these  islands  constitutes  exclusively  the  English  people. 
What  the  educated,  the  wealthy,  the  owners  of  land,  the 
proprietors  of  factories,  the  ministers  of  the  different  denom- 
inations, the  authors  of  books,  the  painters  of  pictures,  the 
bench,  the  bar,  the  army,  the  navy,  the  medical  profession — 
what  all  these  or  any  of  them  might  think  with  regard  to 
any  proposed  constitutional  changes  was  accounted  a  mat- 
ter in  nowise  affecting  the  resolve  of  the  English  "people." 
The  moderate  men  among  the  Chartists  themselves  were 
soon  unable  to  secure  a  hearing;  and  the  word  of  order 
went  round  among  the  body,  that  "  the  English  people " 
must  have  the  Charter  or  a  Republic.  What  had  been 
done  in  France  enthusiasts  fancied  might  well  be  done  in 
England. 

It  was  determined  to  present  a  monster  petition  to  the 
House  of  Commons  demanding  the  Charter,  and,  in  fact,  of- 
fering a  last  chance  to  Parliament  to  yield  quietly  to  the 
demand.  The  petition  was  to  be  presented  by  a  deputation 
who  were  to  be  conducted  by  a  vast  procession  up  to  the 
doors  of  the  House.  The  procession  was  to  be  formed  on 
Kennington  Common,  the  space  then  unenclosed  which  is 
now  Kennington  Park,  on  the  south  side  of  London.  There 
the  Chartists  were  to  be  addressed  by  their  still  trusted 
leader,  Feargus  O'Connor,  and  they  were  to  march  in  mili- 
tary order  to  present  their  petition.  The  object  undoubt- 
edly was  to  make  such  a  parade  of  physical  force  as  should 
overawe  the  Legislature  and  the  Government,  and  demon- 
strate the  impossibility  of  refusing  a  demand  backed  by 
such  a  reserve  of  power.  The  idea  was  taken  from  O'Con- 
nell's  policy  in  the  monster  meetings ;  but  there  were  many 
of  the  Chartists  who  hoped  for  something  more  than  a  mere 
demonstration  of  physical  force,  and  who  would  have  been 
heartily  glad  if  some  untimely  or  unreasonable  interference 
on  the  part  of  the  authorities  had  led  to  a  collision.  A  strong 
faith  still  survived  at  that  day  in  what  was  grandiosely 
called  the  might  of  earnest  numbers.  Ardent  young  Char- 
tists who  belonged  to  the  time  of  life  when  anything  seems 
possible  to  the  brave  and  faithful,  and  when  facts  and  exam- 


294  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

pies  count  for  nothing  unless  they  favor  one's  own  views, 
fully  believed  that  it  needed  but  the  firing  of  the  first  shot, 
"  the  sparkle  of  the  first  sword  drawn,"  to  give  success  to 
the  arms,  though  but  the  bare  arms,  of  the  people,  and  to 
inaugurate  the  reign  of  liberty.  Therefore,  however  differ- 
ently and  harmlessly  events  may  have  turned  out,  we  may 
be  certain  that  there  went  to  the  rendezvous  at  Kenning- 
ton  Common,  on  that  April  10th,  many  hundreds  of  ignorant 
and  excitable  young  men  who  desired  nothing  so  much  as 
a  collision  with  the  police  and  the  military,  and  the  reign 
of  liberty  to  follow.  The  proposed  procession  was  declared 
illegal,  and  all  peaceful  and  loyal  subjects  were  warned  not 
to  take  any  part  in  it.  But  this  was  exactly  what  the  more 
ardent  among  the  Chartists  expected  and  desired  to  see. 
They  were  rejoiced  that  the  Government  had  proclaimed 
the  procession  unlawful.  Was  not  that  the  proper  occasion 
for  resolute  patriots  to  show  that  they  represented  a  cause 
above  despotic  law  ?  Was  not  that  the  very  opportunity 
offered  to  them  to  prove  that  the  people  were  more  mighty 
than  their  rulers,  and  that  the  rulers  must  obey  or  abdicate  ? 
Was  not  the  whole  sequence  of  proceedings  thus  far  ex- 
actly after  the  pattern  of  the  French  Revolution?  The 
people  resolve  that  they  will  have  a  certain  demonstration 
in  a  certain  way;  the  oligarchical  Government  declare  that 
they  shall  not  do  so;  the  people  persevere,  and  of  course 
the  next  thing  must  be  that  the  Government  falls,  exactly 
as  in  Paris.  When  poor  Dick  Swiveller,  in  Dickens's  story, 
is  recovering  from  his  fever,  he  looks  forth  of  his  miserable 
bed  and  makes  up  his  mind  that  he  is  under  the  influence  of 
some  such  magic  spell  as  he  has  become  familiar  with  in  the 
"Arabian  Nights."  His  poverty-stricken  little  nurse  claps 
her  thin  hands  with  joy  to  see  him  alive ;  and  Dick  makes 
up  his  mind  that  the  clapping  of  the  hands  is  the  sign  un- 
derstood of  all  who  read  Eastern  romance,  and  that  next 
must  appear  at  the  princess's  summons  the  row  of  slaves 
with  jars  of  jewels  on  their  heads.  Poor  Dick,  reasoning 
from  his  experiences  in  the  "Arabian  Nights,"  was  not  one 
whit  more  astray  than  enthusiastic  Chartists  reasoning  for 
the  sequence  of  English  politics  from  the  evidence  of  what 
had  happened  in  France.  The  slaves  with  the  jars  of  jewels 
on  their  heads  were  just  as  likely  to  follow  the  clap  of  the 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.  295 

poor  girl's  hands,  as  the  events  that  had  followed  a  popular 
demonstration  in  Paris  to  follow  a  popular  demonstration 
in  London.  To  begin  with,  the  Chartists  did  not  represent 
any  such  power  in  London  as  the  Liberal  deputies  of  the 
French  Chamber  did  in  Paris.  In  the  next  place,  London 
does  not  govern  England,  and  in  our  time,  at  least,  never  did. 
In  the  third  place,  the  English  Government  knew  perfectly 
well  that  they  were  strong  in  the  general  support  of  the 
nation,  and  were  not  likely  to  yield  for  a  single  moment 
to  the  hesitation  which  sealed  the  fate  of  the  French  mon- 
archy. 

The  Chartists  fell  to  disputing  among  themselves  very 
much  as  O'Connell's  Repealers  had  done.  Some  were  for 
disobeying  the  orders  of  the  authorities  and  having  the  pro- 
cession, and  provoking  rather  than  avoiding  a  collision.  At 
a  meeting  of  the  Chartist  Convention  held  the  night  before 
the  demonstration,  "the  eve  of  Liberty,"  as  some  of  the  or- 
ators eloquently  termed  it,  a  considerable  number  were  for 
going  armed  to  Kennington  Common.  Feargus  O'Connor 
had,  however,  sense  enough  still  left  to  throw  the  weight  of 
his  influence  against  such  an  insane  pi'oceeding,  and  to  insist 
that  the  demonstration  must  show  itself  to  be,  as  it  was  from 
the  first  proclaimed  to  be,  a  strictly  pacific  proceeding.  This 
was  the  parting  of  the  ways  in  the  Chartist  as  it  had  been 
in  the  Repeal  agitation.  The  more  ardent  spirits  at  once 
withdrew  from  the  organization.  Those  who  might  even  at 
the  very  last  have  done  mischief  if  they  had  remained  part 
of  the  movement,  withdrew  from  it;  and  Chartism  was  left 
to  be  represented  by  an  open-air  meeting  and  a  petition  to 
Parliament,  like  all  the  other  demonstrations  that  the  me- 
tropolis had  seen  to  pass,  hardly  heeded,  across  the  field  of 
politics.  But  the  public  at  large  was  not  aware  that  the 
fangs  of  Chartism  had  been  drawn  before  it  was  let  loose  to 
play  on  Kennington  Common  that  memorable  10th  of  April. 
London  awoke  in  great  alarm  that  day.  The  Chartists  in 
their  most  sanguine  moments  never  ascribed  to  themselves 
half  the  strength  that  honest  alarmists  of  the  bourgeois  class 
were  ready  that  morning  to  ascribe  to  them.  The  wildest 
rumors  were  spread  abroad  in  many  parts  of  the  metropolis. 
Long  before  the  Chartists  had  got  together  on  Kennington 
Common  at  all,  various  remote  quarters  of  London  were  filled 


296  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

witli  horrifying  reports  of  encounters  between  the  insurgents 
and  the  police  or  the  military,  in  which  the  Chartists  inva- 
riably had  the  better,  and  as  a  result  of  which  they  were 
marching  in  full  force  to  the  particular  district  where  the 
momentary  panic  prevailed.  London  is  worse  off  than  most 
cities  in  such  a  time  of  alarm.  It  is  too  large  for  true  ac- 
counts of  things  rapidly  to  diffuse  themselves.  In  April, 
1848,  the  street  telegraph  was  not  in  use  for  carrying  news 
through  cities,  and  the  rapidly  succeeding  editions  of  the 
cheap  papers  were  as  yet  unknown.  In  various  quarters  of 
London,  therefore,  the  citizen  was  left  through  the  greater 
part  of  the  day  to  all  the  agonies  of  doubt  and  uncertainty. 

There  was  no  lack,  however,  of  public  precautions  against 
an  outbreak  of  armed  Chartism.  The  Duke  of  Wellington 
took  charge  of  all  the  arrangements  for  guarding  the  public 
buildings  and  defending  the  metropolis  generally.  He  act- 
ed with  extreme  caution,  and  told  several  influential  persons 
that  the  troops  were  in  readiness  everywhere,  but  that  they 
would  not  be  seen  unless  an  occasion  actually  rose  for  call- 
ing on  their  services.  The  coolness  and  presence  of  mind  of 
the  stern  old  soldier  are  well  illustrated  in  the  fact  that  to 
several  persons  of  influence  and  authority  who  came  to  him 
with  suggestions  for  the  defence  of  this  place  or  that,  his  al- 
most invariable  answer  was  "  done  already,"  or  "  done  two 
hours  ago,"  or  something  of  the  kind.  A  vast  number  of 
Londoners  enrolled  themselves  as  special  constables  for  the 
maintenance  of  law  and  order.  Nearly  two  hundred  thou- 
sand persons,  it  is  said,  were  sworn  in  for  this  purpose ;  and 
it  will  always  be  told  as  an  odd  incident  of  that  famous 
scare,  that  the  Prince  Louis  Napoleon,  then  living  in  Lon- 
don, was  one  of  those  who  volunteered  to  bear  arms  in  the 
preservation  of  order.  Not  a  long  time  was  to  pass  away 
before  the  most  lawless  outrage  on  the  order  and  life  of  a 
peaceful  city  was  to  be  perpetrated  by  the  special  command 
of  the  man  who  was  so  ready  to  lend  the  saving  aid  of  his 
constable's  staff  to  protect  English  society  against  some  poor 
hundreds  or  thousands  of  English  working-men. 

The  crisis,  however,  luckily  proved  not  to  stand  in  need 
of  such  saviors  of  society.  The  Chartist  demonstration 
was  a  wretched  failure.  The  separation  of  the  Chartists 
who  wanted  force  from  those  who  wanted  orderly  proceed- 


CHARTISM   AND   YOUNG   IRELAND.  297 

ings  reduced  the  project  to  nothing.  The  meeting  on  Ken- 
nington  Common,  so  far  from  being  a  gathering  of  half  a 
million  of  men,  was  not  a  larger  concourse  than  a  temper- 
ance demonstration  had  often  drawn  together  on  the  same 
spot.  Some  twenty  or  twenty-five  thousand  persons  were 
on  Kennington  Common,  of  whom  at  least  half  were  said  to 
be  mere  lookers-on,  come  to  see  what  was  to  happen,  and 
caring  nothing  whatever  about  the  People's  Charter.  The 
procession  was  not  formed,  O'Connor  himself  strongly  insist- 
ing on  obedience  to  the  orders  of  the  authorities.  There 
were  speeches  of  the  usual  kind  by  O'Connor  and  others ; 
and  the  opportunity  was  made  available  by  some  of  the 
more  extreme,  and  consequently  disappointed  Chartists,  to 
express  in  very  vehement  language  their  not  unreasonable 
conviction  that  the  leaders  of  the  convention  were  hum- 
bugs. The  whole  affair,  in  truth,  was  an  absurd  anachro- 
nism. The  lovers  of  law  and  order  could  have  desired  noth- 
ing better  than  that  it  should  thus  come  forth  in  the  light 
of  day  and  show  itself.  The  clap  of  the  "hand  was  given, 
but  the  slaves  with  the  jars  of  jewels  did  not  appear.  It  is 
not  that  the  demands  of  the  Chartists  were  anachronisms 
or  absurdities.  We  have  already  shown  that  many  of  them 
were  just  and  reasonable,  and  that  all  came  within  the  fair 
scope  of  political  argument.  The  anachronism  was  in  the 
idea  that  the  display  of  physical  force  could  any  longer  be 
needed  or  be  allowed  to  settle  a  political  controversy  in 
England.  The  absurdity  was  in  the  notion  that  the  wage- 
receiving  classes,  and  they  alone,  are  "  the  people  of  Eng- 
land." 

The  great  Chartist  petition  itself,  which  was  to  have 
made  so  profound  an  impression  on  the  House  of  Commons, 
proved  as  utter  a  failure  as  the  demonstration  on  Kenning- 
ton Common.  Mr.  O'Connor,  in  presenting  this  portentous 
document,  boasted  that  it  would  be  found  to  have  five  mill- 
ion seven  hundred  thousand  signatures  in  round  numbers. 
The  calculation  was  made  in  very  round  numbers  indeed. 
The  Committee  on  Public  Petitions  were  requested  to  make 
a  minute  examination  of  the  document,  and  to  report  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  committee  called  in  the  service 
of  a  little  army  of  law-stationers'  clerks,  and  went  to  work 
to  analyze  the  signatures.  They  found,  to  begin  with,  that 

13* 


298  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  whole  number  of  signatures,  genuine  or  otherwise,  fell 
short  of  two  millions.  But  that  was  not  all.  The  commit- 
tee found  in  many  cases  that  whole  sheets  of  the  petition 
were  signed  by  the  one  hand,  and  that  eight  per  cent,  of  the 
signatures  were  those  of  women.  It  did  not  need  much  in- 
vestigation to  prove  that  a  large,  proportion  of  the  signa- 
tures were  not  genuine.  The  name  of  the  Queen,  of  Prince 
Albert,  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  Lord 
John  Russell,  Colonel  Sibthorp,  and  various  other  public 
personages,  appeared  again  and  again  on  the  Chartist  roll. 
Some  of  these  eminent  persons  would  appear  to  have  car- 
ried their  zeal  for  the  People's  Charter  so  far  as  to  keep 
signing  their  names  untiringly  all  over  the  petition.  A 
large  number  of  yet  stranger  allies  would  seem  to  have  been 
drawn  to  the  cause  of  the  Charter.  "Cheeks  the  Marine" 
was  a  personage  very  familiar  at  that  time  to  the  readers 
of  Captain  Marryat's  sea  stories;  and  the  name  of  that 
mythical  hero  appeared  with  bewildering  iteration  in  the 
petition.  So  did  "  Davy  Jones  ;"  so  did  various  persons  de- 
scribing themselves  as  Pugnose,  Flatnose,  Wooden-legs,  and 
by  other  such  epithets  acknowledging  curious  personal  de- 
fects. We  need  not  describe  the  laughter  and  scorn  which 
these  revelations  produced.  There  really  was  not  anything 
very  marvellous  in  the  discovery.  The  petition  was  got 
up  in  great  haste  and  with  almost  utter  carelessness.  Its 
sheets  used  to  be  sent  anywhere,  and  left  lying  about  any- 
where, on  a  chance  of  obtaining  signatures.  The  tempta- 
tion to  school-boys  and  practical  jokers  of  all  kinds  was  ir- 
resistible. Wherever  there  was  a  mischievous  hand  that 
could  get  hold  of  a  pen,  there  was  some  name  of  a  royal  per- 
sonage or  some  Cheeks  the  Marine  at  once  added  to  the 
muster-roll  of  the  Chartists.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  almost  all 
large  popular  petitions  are  found  to  have  some  such  buffoon- 
eries mixed  up  with  their  serious  business.  The  Committee 
on  Petitions  have  on  several  occasions  had  reason  to  draw 
attention  to  the  obviously  fictitious  nature  of  signatures 
appended  to  such  documents.  The  petitions  in  favor  of 
O'Connell's  movement  used  to  lie  at  the  doors  of  chapels  all 
the  Sunday  long  in  Ireland,  with  pen  and  ink  ready  for  all 
who  approved  to  sign  ;  and  it  was  many  a  time  the  favor- 
ite amusement  of  school-boys  to  scrawl  clown  the  most  gro- 


CHARTISM  AND   YOUNG   IRELAND.  299 

tesque  names  and  nonsensical  imitations  of  names.  But  the 
Chartist  petition  had  been  so  loudly  boasted  of,  and  the 
whole  Chartist  movement  had  created  such  a  scare,  that  the 
delight  of  the  public  generally  at  any  discovery  that  threw 
both  into  ridicule  was  overwhelming.  It  was  made  certain 
that  the  number  of  genuine  signatures  was  ridiculously  be- 
low the  estimate  formed  by  the  Chartist  leaders ;  and  the 
agitation,  after  terrifying  respectability  for  a  long  time,  sud- 
denly showed  itself  as  a  thing  only  to  be  laughed  at.  The 
laughter  was  stentorian  and  overwhelming.  The  very  fact 
that  the  petition  contained  so  many  absurdities  was  in  itself 
an  evidence  of  the  sincerity  of  those  who  presented  it.  It 
was  not  likely  that  they  would  have  furnished  their  enemies 
with  so  easy  and  tempting  a  way  of  turning  them  into  ridi- 
cule, if  they  had  known  or  suspected  that  there  was  any  lack 
of  genuineness  in  the  signatures,  or  that  they  would  have 
provided  so  ready  a  means  of  decrying  their  truthfulness  as 
to  claim  five  millions  of  names  for  a  document  which  they 
knew  to  have  less  than  two  millions.  The  Chartist  leaders 
in  all  their  doings  showed  a  want  of  accurate  calculation, 
and  of  the  frame  of  mind  which  desires  or  appreciates  such 
accuracy.  The  famous  petition  was  only  one  other  exam- 
ple of  their  habitual  weakness.  It  did  not  bear  testimony 
against  their  good  faith. 

The  effect,  however,  of  this  unlucky  petition  on  the  Eng- 
lish public  mind  was  decisive.  From  that  day  Chartism 
never  presented  itself  to  the  ordinary  middle-class  English- 
man as  anything  but  an  object  of  ridicule.  The  terror  of 
the  agitation  was  gone.  There  were  efforts  made  again  and 
again  during  the  year  by  some  of  the  more  earnest  and  ex- 
treme of  the  Chartist  leaders  to  renew  the  strength  of  the 
agitation.  The  outbreak  of  the  Young  Ireland  movement 
found  many  sympathizers  among  the  English  Chartists,  more 
especially  in  its  earlier  stages ;  and  some  of  the  Chartists  in 
London  and  other  great  English  cities  endeavored  to  light 
up  the  fire  of  their  agitation  again  by  the  help  of  some  brands 
caught  up  from  the  pile  of  disaffection  which  Mitchel  and 
Meagher  were  setting  ablaze  in  Dublin.  A  monster  gath- 
ering of  Chartists  was  announced  for  Whit-Monday,  June 
12th,  and  again  the  metropolis  was  thrown  into  a  momen- 
tary alarm,  very  different  in  strength,  however,  from  that  of 


300  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  famous  10th  of  April.  Again  precautions  were  taken 
by  the  military  authorities  against  the  possible  rising  of  an 
insurrectionary  mob.  Nothing  came  of  this  last  gasp  of 
Chartism.  The  Times  of  the  following  day  remarked  that 
there  was  absolutely  nothing  to  record, "  nothing  except  the 
blankest  expectation,  the  most  miserable  gaping,  gossiping, 
and  grumbling  of  disappointed  listeners ;  the  standing  about, 
the  roaming  to  and  fro,  the  dispersing  and  the  sneaking 
home  of  some  poor  simpletons  who  had  wandered  forth  in 
the  hope  of  some  miraculous  crisis  in  their  affairs."  It  is 
impossible  not  to  pity  those  who  were  thus  deceived  ;  not 
to  feel  some  regret  for  the  earnestness,  the  hope,  the  igno- 
rant, passionate  energy  which  were  thrown  away. 

Nor  can  we  feel  only  surprise  and  contempt  for  those 
who  imagined  that  the  Charter  and  the  rule  of  what  was 
called  in  their  jargon  "  the  people  "  would  do  something  to 
regenerate  their  miserable  lot.  They  had  at  least  seen  that 
up  to  that  time  Parliament  had  done  little  for  them.  There 
had  been  a  Parliament  of  aristocrats  and  landlords,  and  it 
had  for  generations  troubled  itself  little  about  the  class  from 
whom  Chartism  was  recruited.  The  sceptre  of  legislative 
power  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  a  Parliament  made  up 
in  great  measure  of  the  wealthy  middle  ranks,  and  it  had 
thus  far  shown  no  inclination  to  distress  itself  overmuch 
about  them.  Almost  every  single  measure  Parliament  has 
passed  to  do  any  good  for  the  wages-receiving  classes  and 
the  poor  generally  has  been  passed  since  the  time  when  the 
Chartists  began  to  be  a  power.  Our  Corn-laws'  repeal,  our 
factory  acts,  our  sanitary  legislation,  our  measures  referring 
to  the  homes  of  the  poor — all  these  have  been  the  work  of 
later  times  than  those  which  engendered  the  Chartist  move- 
ment. It  is  easy  to  imagine  a  Chartist  replying,  in  the  early 
days  of  the  movement,  to  some  grave  remonstrances  from 
wise  legislators.  He  might  say,  "  You  tell  me  I  am  mad  to 
think  the  Charter  can  do  anything  for  me  and  my  class. 
But  can  you  tell  me  what  else  ever  has  done,  or  tried  to 
do,  any  good  for  them  ?  You  think  I  am  a  crazy  person,  be- 
cause I  believe  that  a  popular  Parliament  could  make  any- 
thing of  the  task  of  govei*nment.  I  ask  you  what  have 
you  and  your  like  made  of  it  already?  Things  are  well 
enough,  no  doubt,  for  you  and  your  class,  a  pitiful  minority; 


CHARTISM   AND   YOUNG   IRELAND.  301 

but  they  could  not  be  any  worse  for  us,  and  we  might  make 
them  better,  so  far  as  the  great  majority  are  concerned. 
We  may  fairly  crave  a  trial  for  our  experiment.  No  mat- 
ter how  wild  and  absurd  it  may  seem,  it  could  not  turn  out 
for  the  majority  any  worse  than  your  scheme  has  done." 
It  would  not  have  been  very  easy  then  to  answer  a  speaker 
who  took  this  line  of  argument.  In  truth  there  was,  as  we 
have  already  insisted,  grievance  enough  to  excuse  the  Char- 
tist agitation,  and  hope  enough  in  the  scheme  the  Chartists 
proposed  to  warrant  its  fair  discussion.  Such  movements 
are  never  to  be  regarded  by  sensible  persons  as  the  work 
merely  of  knaves  and  dupes. 

Chartism  bubbled  and  sputtered  a  little  yet  in  some  of 
the  provincial  towns,  and  even  in  London.  There  were 
Chartist  riots  in  Ashton,  Lancashire,  and  an  affray  with  the 
police,  and  the  killing,  before  the  affray,  it  is  painful  to  have 
to  say,  of  one  policeman.  There  were  Chartists  arrested 
in  Manchester  on  the  charge  of  preparing  insurrectionary 
movements.  In  two  or  three  public-houses  in  London  some 
Chartist  juntas  were  arrested,  and  the  police  believed  they 
had  got  evidence  of  a  projected  rising  to  take  in  the  whole 
of  the  metropolis.  It  is  not  impossible  that  some  wild  and 
frantic  schemes  of  the  kind  were  talked  of  and  partly  hatch- 
ed by  some  of  the  disappointed  fanatics  of  the  movement. 
Some  of  them  were  fiery  and  ignorant  enough  for  anything; 
and  throughout  this  memorable  year  thrones  and  systems 
kept  toppling  down  all  over  Europe  in  a  manner  that  might 
well  have  led  feather-headed  agitators  to  fancy  that  nothing 
was  stable,  and  that  in  England,  too,  the  whistle  of  a  few 
conspirators  might  bring  about  a  transformation  scene.  All 
this  folly  came  to  nothing  but  a  few  arrests  and  a  few  not 
heavy  sentences.  Among  those  tried  in  London  on  charges 
of  sedition  merely  was  Mr.  Ernest  Jones,  who  was  sentenced 
to  two  years'  imprisonment.  Mr.  Jones  has  been  already 
spoken  of  as  a  man  of  position  and  of  high  culture ;  a  poet 
whose  verses  sometimes  might  almost  claim  for  their  author 
the  possession  of  genius.  He  was  an  orator  whose  speeches 
then  and  after  obtained  the  enthusiastic  admiration  of  John 
Bright.  He  belonged  rather  to  the  school  of  revolutionists 
which  established  itself  as  Young  Ireland,  than  to  the  class 
of  the  poor  Fussells  and  Cuffeys  and  uneducated  working- 


302  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

men  who  made  up  the  foremost  ranks  of  the  aggressive 
Chartist  movement  in  its  later  period.  He  might  have  had 
a  brilliant  and  a  useful  career.  He  outlived  the  Chartist 
era ;  lived  to  return  to  peaceful  agitation,  to  hold  public 
controversy  with  the  eccentric  and  clever  Professor  Blackie, 
of  Edinburgh,  on  the  relative  advantages  of  republicanism 
and  monarchy,  and  to  stand  for  a  Parliamentary  borough  at 
the  general  election  of  1868  ;  and  then  his  career  was  closed 
by  death.  The  close  was  sadly  premature  even  then.  He 
had  plunged  immaturely  into  politics,  and  although  a  whole 
generation  had  passed  away  since  his  debut,  he  was  but  a 
young  man  comparatively  when  the  last  scene  came. 

Here  comes,  not  inappropriately,  to  an  end  the  history  of 
English  Chartism.  It  died  of  publicity ;  of  exposure  to  the 
air;  of  the  Anti-Corn-law  League;  of  the  evident  tendency 
of  the  time  to  settle  all  questions  by  reason,  argument,  and 
majorities;  of  growing  education;  of  a  strengthening  sense 
of  duty  among  all  the  more  influential  classes.  When  Sir 
John  Campbell  spoke  its  obituary  years  before,  as  we  have 
seen,  he  treated  it  as  simply  a  monster  killed  by  the  just 
severity  of  the  law.  Ten  years'  experience  taught  the  Eng- 
lish public  to  be  wiser  than  Sir  John  Campbell.  Chartism 
did  not  die  of  its  own  excesses;  it  became  an  anachronism; 
no  one  wanted  it  any  more.  All  that  was  sound  in  its 
claims  asserted  itself,  and  was  in  time  conceded.  But  its  ac- 
tive or  aggressive  influence  ceased  with  1848.  The  history 
of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria  has  not  any  further  to  con- 
cern itself  about  Chartism.  Not  since  that  year  has  there 
been  serious  talk  or  thought  of  any  agitation  asserting  its 
claims  by  the  use  or  even  the  display  of  armed  force  in 
England. 

The  spirit  of  the  time  had,  meanwhile,  made  itself  felt  in 
a  different  way  in  Ireland.  For  some  months  before  the 
beginning  of  the  year  the  Young  Ireland  party  had  been  es- 
tablished as  a  rival  association  to  the  Repealers  who  still 
believed  in  the  policy  of  O'Connell.  It  was  inevitable  that 
O'Connell's  agitation  should  beget  some  such  movement. 
The  great  agitator  had  brought  the  temperament  of  the 
younger  men  of  his  party  up  to  a  fever  heat,  and  it  was  out 
of  the  question  that  all  that  heat  should  subside  in  the  veins 
of  young  collegians  and  school-boys  at  the  precise  moment 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.  303 

when  the  leader  found  that  he  had  been  going  too  far,  and 
gave  the  word  for  peace  and  retreat.  The  influence  of 
O'Connell  had  been  waning  for  a  time  before  his  death.  It 
was  a  personal  influence  depending  on  his  eloquence  and  his 
power,  and  these  of  course  had  gone  down  with  his  personal 
decay.  The  Nation  newspaper,  which  was  conducted  and 
written  for  by  some  rising  young  men  of  high  culture  and 
remarkable  talent,  had  long  been  writing  in  a  style  of  ro- 
mantic find  sentimental  nationalism  which  could  hardly  give 
much  satisfaction  to  or  derive  much  satisfaction  from  the 
somewhat  cunning  and  trickish  agitation  which  O'Connell 

~  o 

had  set  going.  The  Nation  and  the  clever  youths  who 
wrote  for  it  were  all  for  nationalism  of  the  Hellenic  or  French 
type,  and  were  disposed  to  laugh  at  constitutional  agitation, 
and  to  chafe  against  the  influence  of  the  priests.  The  famine 
had  created  an  immense  amount  of  unreasonable  but  certain- 
ly not  unnatural  indignation  against  the  Government,  who 
were  accused  of  having  paltered  with  the  agony  and  danger 
of  the  time,  and  having  clung  to  the  letter  of  the  doctrines 
of  political  economy  when  death  was  invading  Ireland  in 
full  force.  The  Young  Ireland  party  had  received  a  new 
support  by  the  adhesion  of  Mr.  William  Smith  O'Brien  to 
their  ranks.  Mr.  O'Brien  was  a  man  of  considerable  influ- 
ence in  Ireland.  He  had  large  property  and  high  rank.  He 
was  connected  with  or  related  to  many  aristocratic  families. 
His  brother  was  Lord  Inchiquin ;  the  title  of  the  marquisate 
of  Thomond  was  in  the  family.  He  was  undoubtedly  de- 
scended from  the  famous  Irish  hero  and  king,  Brian  Born, 
and  was  almost  inordinately  proud  of  his  claims  of  long  de- 
scent. He  had  the  highest  personal  character  and  the  finest 
sense  of  honor;  but  his  capacity  for  leadership  of  any  move- 
ment was  very  slender.  A  poor  speaker,  with  little  more 
than  an  ordinary  country  gentleman's  shai'e  of  intellect, 
O'Brien  was  a  well-meaning  but  weak  and  vain  man,  whose 
head  at  last  became  almost  turned  by  the  homage  which  his 
followei's  and  the  Irish  people  generally  paid  to  him.  He 
was,  in  short,  a  sort  of  Lafayette  manque /  under  the  happi- 
est auspices  he  could  never  have  been  more  than  a  successful 
Lafayette.  But  his  adhesion  to  the  cause  of  Young  Ireland 
gave  the  movement  a  decided  impulse.  His  rank,  his  legen- 
dary descent,  his  undoubted  chivalry  of  character  and  purity 


A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

of  purpose,  lent  a  romantic  interest  to  his  appearance  as  the 
recognized  leader,  or  at  least  the  figure-head,  of  the  Young 
Irelanders. 

Smith  O'Brien  was  a  man  of  more  mature  years  than  most 
of  his  companions  in  the  movement.  He  was  some  forty-three 
or  four  years  of  age  when  he  took  the  leadership  of  the  move- 
ment. Thomas  Francis  Meagher,  the  most  brilliant  orator  of 
the  party,  a  man  who  under  other  conditions  might  have  risen 
to  great  distinction  in  public  life,  was  then  only  about  two 
or  three  and  twenty.  Mitchel  and  Duffy,  who  were  regard- 
ed as  elders  among  the  Young  Irelanders,  were  perhaps  each 
some  thirty  years  of  age.  There  were  many  men,  more  or 
less  prominent  in  the  movement,  who  were  still  younger  than 
Meagher.  One  of  these,  who  afterward  rose  to  some  distinc- 
tion in  America,  and  is  long  since  dead,  wrote  a  poem  about 
the  time  when  the  Young  Ireland  movement  was  at  its 
height,  in  which  he  commemorated  sadly  his  attainment  of 
his  eighteenth  year,  and  deplored  that,  at  an  age  when  Chat- 
terton  was  mighty  and  Keats  had  glimpses  into  spirit-land — 
the  age  of  eighteen,  to  wit — he,  this  young  Irish  patriot,  had 
yet  accomplished  nothing  for  his  native  country.  Most  of 
his  companions  sympathized  fully  with  him,  and  thought  his 
impatience  natural  and  reasonable.  The  Young  Ireland  agi- 
tation was  at  first  a  sort  of  college  debating  society  move- 
ment, and  it  never  became  really  national.  It  was  com- 
posed for  the  most  part  of  young  journalists,  young  schol- 
ars, amateur  litterateurs,  poets  en  herbe,  orators  moulded  on 
the  finest  patterns  of  Athens  and  the  French  Revolution,  and 
aspiring  youths  of  the  Cherubino  time  of  life,  who  were  am- 
bitious of  distinction  as  heroes  in  the  eyes  of  young  ladies. 
Among  the  recognized  leaders  of  the  party  there  was  hardly 
one  in  want  of  money.  Some  of  them  were  young  men  of 
fortune,  or  at  least  the  sons  of  wealthy  parents.  Not  many 
of  the  dangerous  revolutionary  elements  were  to  be  found 
among  these  clever,  respectable,  and  precocious  youths. 
The  Young  Ireland  movement  was  as  absolutely  unlike  the 
Chartist  movement  in  England  as  any  political  agitation 
could  be  unlike  another.  Unreal  and  unlucky  as  the  Char- 
tist movement  proved  to  be,  its  ranks  were  recruited  by 
genuine  passion  and  genuine  misery. 

Before  the  death  of  O'Connell  the  formal  secession  of  the 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.      .  305 

Young  Ireland  party  from  the  regular  Repealers  had  taken 
place.  It  arose  out  of  an  attempt  of  O'Connell  to  force 
upon  the  whole  body  a  declaration  condemning  the  use  of 
physical  force — of  the  sword,  as  it  was  grandiosely  called — 
in  any  patriotic  movement  whatever.  It  was  in  itself  a  sign 
of  O'Connell's  failing  powers  and  judgment  that  he  expected 
to  get  a  body  of  men  about  the  age  of  Meagber  to  make  a 
formal  declaration  against  the  weapon  of  Leonidas  and  Mil- 
tiades,  and  all  the  other  heroes  dear  to  classically-instructed 
youth.  Meagher  declaimed  against  the  idea  in  a  burst  of 
poetic  rhetoric  which  made  his  followers  believe  that,  a  new 
Grattan  of  bolder  style  was  coming  up  to  recall  the  manhood 
of  Ireland  that  had  been  banished  by  the  agitation  of  O'Con- 
nell and  the  priests.  "I  am  riot  one  of  those  tame  moral- 
ists," the  young  orator  exclaimed,  "  who  say  that  liberty  is 
not  worth  one  drop  of  blood.  .  .  .  Against  this  miserable 
maxim  the  noblest  virtue  that  has  saved  and  sanctified  hu- 
manity appears  in  judgment.  From  the  blue  waters  of  the 
Bay  of  Salamis ;  from  the  valley  over  which  the  sun  stood 
still  and  lit  the  Israelite  to  victory;  from  the  cathedral  in 
which  the  sword  of  Poland  has  been  sheathed  in  the  shroud 
of  Kosciusko ;  from  the  convent  of  St.  Isidore, where  the  fiery 
hand  that  rent  the  ensign  of  St.  George  upon  the  plains  of 
Ulster  has  mouldered  into  dust;  from  the  sands  of  the  des- 
ert, where  the  wild  genius  of  the  Algerine  so  long  has  scared 
the  eagle  of  the  Pyrenees ;  from  the  ducal  palace  in  this 
kingdom,  where  the  memory  of  the  gallant  and  seditious 
Geraldine  enhances  more  than  royal  favor  the  splendor  of 
his  race ;  from  the  solitary  grave  within  this  mute  city  which 
a  dying  bequest  has  left  without  an  epitaph — oh !  from  ev- 
ery spot  where  heroism  has  had  a  sacrifice  or  a  triumph,  a 
voice  breaks  in  upon  the  cringing  crowd  that  cherishes  this 
maxim,  crying,  Away  with  it — away  with  it !" 

The  reader  will  probably  think  that  a  generation  of  young 
men  might  have  enjoyed  as  much  as  they  could  get  of  this 
sparkling  declamation  without  much  harm  being  done  there- 
by to  the  cause  of  order.  Only  a  crowd  of  well-educated 
young  Irishmen  fresh  from  college,  and  with  the  teaching  of 
their  country's  history  which  the  Nation  was  pouring  out 
weekly  in  prose  and  poetry,  could  possibly  have  understood 
all  its  historical  allusions.  No  harm,  indeed,  would  have 


306  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

come  of  this  graceful  and  poetic  movement  were  it  not  for 
events  which  the  Young  Ireland  party  had  no  share  in  bring- 
ing about. 

The  Continental  revolutions  of  the  year  1848  suddenly 
converted  the  movement  from  a  literary  and  poetical  organ- 
ization into  a  rebellious  conspiracy.  The  fever  of  that  wild 
epoch  spread  itself  at  once  over  Ireland.  When  crowns 
were  going  down  everywhere,  what  wonder  if  Hellenic 
Young  Irelandism  believed  that  the  moment  had  come  when 
the  crown  of  the  Saxon  invader  too  was  destined  to  fall? 
The  French  Revolution  and  the  flight  of  Louis  Philippe  set 
Ireland  in  a  rapture  of  hope  and  rebellious  joy.  Lamartine 
became  the  hero  of  the  hour.  A  copy  of  his  showy,  super- 
ficial "  Girondists "  was  in  the  hand  of  every  true  Young 
Irelander.  Meagher  was  at  once  declared  to  be  the  Vergn- 
iaud  of  the  Irish  revolution.  Smith  O'Brien  was  called 
upon  to  become  its  Lafayette.  A  deputation  of  Young  Ire- 
landers,  with  O'Brien  and  Meagher  at  their  head,  waited 
upon  Lamartine,  and  were  received  by  him  with  a  cool  good- 
sense  which  made  Englishmen  greatly  respect  his  judgment 
and  prudence,  but  which  much  disconcerted  the  hopes  of 
the  Young  Irelanders.  Many  of  these  latter  appear  to  have 
taken  in  their  most  literal  sense  some  words  of  Lamartine's 
about  the  sympathy  of  the  new  French  Republic  with  the 
struggles  of  oppressed  nationalities,  and  to  have  fancied  that 
the  Republic  would  seriously  consider  the  propriety  of  go- 
ing to  war  with  England  at  the  request  of  a  few  young  men 
from  Ireland,  headed  by  a  country  gentleman  and  member 
of  Parliament.  In  the  mean  time  a  fresh  and  a  stronger  in- 
fluence than  that  of  O'Brien  or  Meagher  had  arisen  in  Young 
Irelandism.  Young  Ireland  itself  now  split  into  two  sec- 
tions, one  for  immediate  action,  the  other  for  caution  and 
delay.  The  party  of  action  acknowledged  the  leadership  of 
John  Mitchel.  The  organ  of  this  section  was  the  newspa- 
per started  by  Mitchel  in  opposition  to  the  Nation,  which 
had  grown  too  slow  for  him.  The  new  journal  was  called 
the  United  Irishman,  and  in  a  short  time  it  had  completely 
distanced  the  Nation  in  popularity  and  in  circulation.  The 
deliberate  policy  of  the  United  Irishman  was  to  force  the 
hand  first  of  the  Government  and  then  of  the  Irish  people. 
Mitchel  had  made  up  his  mind  so  to  rouse  the  passion  of  the 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.  307 

people  as  to  compel  the  Government  to  take  steps  for  the 
prevention  of  rebellion  by  the  arrest  of  some  of  the  leaders. 
Then  Mitchel  calculated  upon  the  populace  rising  to  defend 
or  rescue  their  heroes — and  then  the  game  would  be  afoot ; 
Ireland  would  be  entered  in  rebellion  ;  and  the  rest  would 
be  for  fate  to  decide. 

This  looks  now  a  very  wild  and  hopeless  scheme.  So,  of 
course,  it  proved  itself  to  be.  But  it  did  not  appear  so  hope- 
less at  the  time,  even  to  cool  heads.  At  least  it  may  be 
called  the  only  scheme  which  had  the  slightest  chance  of 
success;  we  do  not  say  of  success  in  establishing  the  in- 
dependence of  Ireland,  which  Mitchel  sought  for,  but  in  set- 
ting a  genuine  rebellion  afoot.  Mitchel  was  the  one  formi- 
dable man  among  the  rebels  of  '48.  He  was  the  one  man 
who  distinctly  knew  what  he  wanted,  and  was  prepared  to 
run  any  risk  to  get  it.  He  was  cast  in  the  very  mould  of 
the  genuine  revolutionist,  and  under  different  circumstances 
might  have  played  a  formidable  part.  He  came  from  the 
northern  part  of  the  island,  and  was  a  Protestant  Dissenter. 
It  is  a  fact  worthy  of  note  that  all  the  really  formidable 
rebels  Ireland  has  produced  in  modern  times,  from  Wolfe 
Tone  to  Mitchel,  have  been  Protestants.  Mitchel  was  a  man 
of  great  literary  talent ;  indeed  a  man  of  something  like 
genius.  He  wrote  a  clear,  bold,  incisive  prose,  keen  in  its 
scorn  and  satire,  going  directly  to  the  heart  of  its  purpose. 
As  mere  prose,  some  of  it  is  worth  reading  even  to-day  for 
its  cutting  force  and  pitiless  irony.  Mitchel  issued  in  his 
paper  week  after  week  a  challenge  to  the  Government  to 
prosecute  him.  He  poured  out  the  most  fiery  sedition,  and 
used  every  incentive  that  words  could  supply  to  rouse  a  hot- 
headed people  to  arms,  or  an  impatient  Government  to  some 
act  of  severe  repression.  Mitchel  was  quite  ready  to  make 
a  sacrifice  of  himself  if  it  were  necessary.  It  is  possible 
enough  that  he  had  persuaded  himself  into  the  belief  that  a 
rising  in  Ireland  against  the  Government  might  be  success- 
ful. But  there  is  good  reason  to  think  that  he  would  have 
been  quite  satisfied  if  he  could  have  stirred  up  by  any  proc- 
ess a  genuine  and  sanguinary  insurrection,  which  would 
have  read  well  in  the  papers,  and  redeemed  the  Irish  Nation- 
alists from  what  he  considered  the  disgrace  of  never  having 
shown  that  they  knew  how  to  die  for  their  cause.  He  kept 


A   HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

on  urging  the  people  to  prepare  for  warlike  effort,  and  every 
week's  United  Irishman  contained  long  descriptions  of  how 
to  make  pikes  and  how  to  use  them ;  how  to  cast  bullets, 
how  to  make  the  streets  as  dangerous  for  the  hoofs  of  caval- 
ry horses  as  Bruce  made  the  field  of  Bannockburn.  Some 
of  the  recipes,  if  we  may  call  them  so,  were  of  a  peculiarly 
ferocious  kind.  The  use  of  vitriol  was  recommended  among 
other  destructive  agencies.  A  feeling  of  detestation  was 
not  unnaturally  aroused  against  Mitchel,  even  in  the  minds 
of  many  who  sympathized  with  his  general  opinions ;  and 
those  whom  we  may  call  the  Girondists  of  the  party  some- 
what shrank  from  him,  and  would  gladly  have  been  rid  of 
him.  It  is  true  that  the  most  ferocious  of  these  vitriolic 
articles  were  not  written  by  him ;  nor  did  he  know  of  the 
famous  recommendation  about  the  throwing  of  vitriol  until 
it  appeared  in  print.  He  was,  however,  justly  and  properly 
as  well  as  technically  responsible  for  all  that  appeared  in  a 
paper  started  with  such  a  purpose  as  that  of  the  United  Irish- 
man, and  it  is  not  even  certain  that  he  would  have  disap- 
proved of  the  vitriol -throwing  recommendation  if  he  had 
known  of  it  in  time.  He  never  disavowed  it,  nor  took  any 
pains  to  show  that  it  was  not  his  own.  The  fact  that  he 
was  not  its  author  is,  therefore,  only  mentioned  here  as  a 
matter  more  or  less  interesting,  and  not  at  all  as  any  excuse 
for  Mitchel's  general  style  of  newspaper  war-making.  He 
was  a  fanatic,  clever  and  fearless ;  he  would  neither  have 
asked  quarter  nor  given  it;  and,  undoubtedly,  if  Ireland  had 
had  many  men  of  his  desperate  resolve  she  would  have  been 
plunged  into  a  bloody,  an  obstinate,  and  a  disastrous  contest 
against  the  strength  of  the  British  Government. 

In  the  mean  time  that  Government  had  to  do  something. 
The  Lord -lieutenant  could  not  go  on  forever  allowing  a 
newspaper  to  scream  out  appeals  to  rebellion,  and  to  pub- 
lish every  week  minute  descriptions  of  the  easiest  and  quick- 
est way  of  killing  off  English  soldiers.  The  existing  laws 
were  not  strong  enough  to  deal  with  Mitchel  and  to  sup- 
press his  paper.  It  would  have  been  of  little  account  to 
proceed  against  him  under  the  ordinary  laws  which  con- 
demned seditious  speaking  or  writing.  Prosecutions  were, 
in  fact,  set  on  foot  against  O'Brien,  Meagher,  and  Mitchel 
himself  for  ordinary  offences  of  that  kind  ;  but  the  accused 


CHARTISM  AND   YOUNG  IRELAND.  309 

men  got  bail,  and  went  on  meantime  speaking  and  writing 
as  before,  and  when  the  cases  came  to  be  tried  by  a  jury  the 
Government  failed  to  obtain  a  conviction.  The  Government, 
therefore,  brought  in  a  bill  for  the  better  security  of  the 
Crown  and  Government,  making  all  written  incitement  to 
insurrection  or  resistance  to  the  law  felony,  punishable  with 
transportation.  This  measure  was  passed  rapidly  through 
nil  its  stages.  It  enabled  the  Government  to  suppress  news- 
papers like  the  United  Irishman^  and  to  keep  in  prison  with- 
out bail,  while  awaiting  trial,  any  one  charged  with  an  of- 
fence under  the  new  Act.  Mitchel  soon  gave  the  authorities 
an  opportunity  of  testing  the  efficacy  of  the  Act  in  his  per- 
son. He  repeated  his  incitements  to  insurrection,  was  ar- 
rested alid  thrown  into  prison.  The  climax  of  the  excite- 
ment in  Ireland  was  reached  when  Mitchel's  trial  came  on. 
There  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  was  filled  with  a  strong 
hope  that  his  followers  would  attempt  to  rescue  him.  He 
wrote  from  his  cell  that  he  could  hear  around  the  walls  of 
his  prison  every  night  the  tramp  of  hundreds  of  sympathiz- 
ers, "felons  in  heart  and  soul."  The  Government,  for  their 
part,  were  in  full  expectation  that  some  sort  of  rising  would 
take  place.  For  the  time,  Smith  O'Brien,  Meagher,  and  all 
the  other  Young  Irelanders  were  thrown  into  the  shade,  and 
the  eyes  of  the  whole  country  were  turned  upon  Mitchel's 
cell.  Had  there  been  another  Mitchel  out-of-doors,  as  fear- 
less and  reckless  as  the  Mitchel  in  the  prison,  a  sanguinary 
outbreak  would  probably  have  taken  place.  But  the  lead- 
ers of  the  movement  outside  were  by  no  means  clear  in  their 
own  minds  as  to  the  course  they  ought  to  pursue.  Many  of 
them  were  well  satisfied  of  the  hopelessness  and  folly  of  any 
rebellious  movement,  and  nearly  all  were  quite  aware  that, 
in  any  case,  the  country  just  then  was  wholly  unprepared  for 
.  anything  of  the  kind.  Not  a  few  had  a  shrewd  suspicion 
that  the  movement  never  had  taken  any  real  hold  on  the 
heart  of  the  country.  Some  were  jealous  of  Mitchel's  sud- 
den popularity,  and  in  their  secret  hearts  were  disposed  to 
curse  him  for  the  trouble  he  had  brought  on  them.  But 
they  could  not  attempt  to  give  open  utterance  to  such  a 
sentiment.  Mitchel's  boldness  and  resolve  had  placed  them 
at  a  sad  disadvantage.  He  had  that  superiority  of  influence 
over  them  that  downright  determination  always  gives  a  man 


310  A  HISTOKY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

over  colleagues  who  do  not  quite  know  what  they  would 
have.  One  thing,  however,  they  could  do ;  and  that  they 
did.  They  discouraged  any  idea  of  an  attempt  to  rescue 
Mitchel.  His  trial  came  on.  He  was  found  guilty.  He 
made  a  short  but  powerful  and  impassioned  speech  from  the 
dock ;  he  was  sentenced  to  fourteen  years'  transportation ; 
he  was  hurried  under  an  escort  of  cavalry  through  the  streets 
of  Dublin,  put  on  board  a  ship  of  war,  and  in  a  few  hours 
was  on  his  way  to  Bermuda.  Dublin  remained  perfectly 
quiet ;  the  country  outside  hardly  knew  what  was  happen- 
ing until  Mitchel  was  well  on  his  way,  and  far-seeing  per- 
sons smiled  to  themselves  and  said  the  danger  was  all  over. 
So,  indeed,  it  proved  to  be.  The  remainder  of  the  proceed- 
ings partook  rather  of  the  nature  of  burlesque.  The  Young 
Ireland  leaders  became  more  demonstrative  than  ever.  The 
Nation  newspaper  now  went  in  openly  for  rebellion,  but  re- 
bellion at  some  unnamed  time,  and  when  Ireland  should  be 
ready  to  meet  the  Saxon.  It  seemed  to  be  assumed  that  the 
Saxon,  with  a  characteristic  love  of  fair-play,  would  let  his 
foes  make  all  the  preparations  they  pleased  without  any  in- 
terference, and  that  when  they  announced  themselves  ready, 
then,  but  not  until  then,  would  he  come  forth  to  fight  with 
them.  Smith  O'Brien  went  about  the  country  holding  re- 
views of  the  "Confederates,"  as  the  Young  Irelanders  called 
themselves.  The  Government,  however,  showed  a  contempt 
for  the  rules  of  fair-play,  suspended  the  Habeas  Corpus  Act 
in  Ireland,  and  issued  warrants  for  the  arrest  of  Smith 
O'Brien,  Meagher,  and  other  Confederate  leaders.  The 
Young  Irelanders  received  the  news  of  this  unchivalric  pro- 
ceeding with  an  outburst  of  anger  and  surprise  which  was 
evidently  genuine.  They  had  clearly  made  up  their  minds 
that  they  were  to  go  on  playing  at  preparation  for  rebel- 
lion as  long  as  they  liked  to  keep  up  the  game.  They  were 
completely  puzzled  by  the  new  condition  of  things.  It  was 
not  very  clear  what  Leonidas  or  Vergniaud  would  have  done 
under  such  circumstances;  it  was  certain  that  if  they  were 
all  arrested  the  country  would  not  stir  hand  or  foot  on  their 
behalf.  Some  of  the  principal  leaders,  therefore  —  Smith 
O'Brien,  Meagher,  Dillon,  and  others — left  Dublin  and  went 
down  into  the  country.  It  is  not  certain  even  yet  whether 
they  had  any  clear  purpose  of  rebellion  at  first.  It  seems 


CHARTISM  AND   YOUNG  IRELAND.  311 

probable  that  they  thought  of  evading  arrest  for  awhile,  and 
trying  meantime  if  the  country  was  ready  to  follow  them 
into  an  armed  movement.  They  held  a  series  of  gatherings 
which  might  be  described  as  meetings  of  agitators,  or  mar- 
shallings  of  rebels,  according  as  one  was  pleased  to  interpret 
their  purpose.  But  this  sort  of  thing  very  soon  drifted  into 
rebellion.  The  principal  body  of  the  followers  of  Smith 
O'Brien  came  into  collision  with  the  police  at  a  place  called 
Ballingarry,  in  Tipperary.  They  attacked  a  small  force  of 
police,  who  took  refuge  in  the  cottage  of  a  poor  widow 
named  Cormack.  The  police  held  the  house  as  a  besieged 
fort,  and  the  rebels  attacked  them  from  the  famous  cabbage- 
garden  outside.  The  police  fired  a  few  volleys.  The  rebels 
fired,  with  what  wretched  muskets  and  rifles  they  possessed, 
but  without  harming  a  single  policeman.  After  a  few  of 
them  had  been  killed  or  wounded — it  never  was  perfectly 
certain  that  any  were  actually  killed — the  rebel  army  dis- 
persed, and  the  rebellion  was  all  over.  In  a  few  days  after, 
poor  Smith  O'Brien  was  taken  quietly  at  the  railway  station 
in  Thurles,  Tipperary.  He  was  calmly  buying  a  ticket  for 
Limerick  when  he  was  recognized.  He  made  no  resistance 
whatever,  and  seemed  to  regard  the  whole  mummery  as  at 
an  end.  He  accepted  his  fate  with  the  composure  of  a  gen- 
tleman, and,  indeed,  in  all  the  part  which  was  left  for  him 
to  play  he  bore  himself  with  dignity.  It  is  but  justice  to  an 
unfortunate  gentleman  to  say  that  some  reports  which  were 
rather  ignobly  set  abroad  about  his  having  showed  a  lack 
of  personal  courage  in  the  Ballingarry  affray  were,  as  all 
will  readily  believe,  quite  untrue.  Some  of  the  police  de- 
posed that  during  the  fight,  if  fight  it  could  be  called,  poor 
O'Brien  exposed  his  life  with  entire  recklessness.  One 
policeman  said  he  could  have  shot  him  easily  at  several 
periods  of  the  little  drama,  but  he  felt  reluctant  to  be  the 
slayer  of  the  misguided  descendant  of  the  Irish  kings.  It 
afterward  appeared,  also,  that  any  little  chance  of  carrying 
on  any  manner  of  rebellion  was  put  a  stop  to  by  Smith 
O'Brien's  own  resolution  that  his  rebels  must  not  seize  the 
private  property  of  any  one.  He  insisted  that  his  rebellion 
must  pay  its  way,  and  the  funds  were  soon  out.  The  Con- 
federate leader  woke  from  a  dream  when  he  saw  his  follow- 
ers dispersing  after  the  first  volley  or  two  from  the  police. 


312  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

From  that  moment  he  behaved  like  a  dignified  gentleman, 
equal  to  the  fate  he  had  brought  upon  him. 

Meagher  and  two  of  his  companions  were  arrested  a  few 
days  after,  as  they  were  wandering  hopelessly  and  aimlessly 
through  the  mountains  of  Tipperary.  The  prisoners  were 
brought  for  trial  before  a  special  commission  held  at  Clon- 
mel,  in  Tipperary,  in  the  following  September.  Smith 
O'Brien  was  the  first  put  on  trial,  and  he  was  found  guilty. 
He  said  a  few  words  with  grave  and  dignified  composure, 
simply  declaring  that  he  had  endeavored  to  do  his  duty  to 
his  native  country,  and  that  he  was  prepared  to  abide  the 
consequences.  He  was  sentenced  to  death  after  the  old  form 
in  cases  of  high-treason — to  be  hanged,  beheaded,  and  quar- 
tered. Meagher  was  afterward  found  guilty.  Great  com- 
miseration was  felt  for  him.  His  youth  and  his  eloquence 
made  all  men  and  women  pity  him.  His  father  was  a 
wealthy  man  who  had  had  a  respected  career  in  Parliament ; 
and  there  had  seemed  at  one  time  to  be  a  bright  and  happy 
life  before  young  Meagher.  The  short  address  in  which 
Meagher  vindicated  his  actions,  when  called  upon  to  show 
cause  why  sentence  of  death  should  not  be  passed  upon  him, 
was  full  of  manly  and  pathetic  eloquence.  He  had  nothing, 
he  said,  to  retract  or  to  ask  pardon  for.  "  I  am  not  here  to 
crave  with  faltering  lip  the  life  I  have  consecrated  to  the 
independence  of  my  country.  ...  I  offer  to  my  country, 
as  some  proof  of  the  sincerity  with  which  I  have  thought 
and  spoken  and  struggled  for  her,  the  life  '  of  a  young 
heart.  .  .  .  The  history  of  Ireland  explains  my  crime,  and 
justifies  it.  ...  Even  here,  where  the  shadows  of  death 
surround  me,  and  from  which  I  see  my  early  grave  opening 
for  me  in  no  consecrated  soil,  the  hope  which  beckoned  me 
forth  on  that  perilous  sea  whereon  I  have  been  wrecked,  ani- 
mates, consoles,  enraptures  me.  No,  I  do  not  despair  of  my 
poor  old  countty,  her  peace,  her  liberty,  her  glory." 

Meagher  was  sentenced  to  death  with  the  same  hideous 
formularies  as  those  which  had  been  observed  in  the  case 
of  Smith  O'Brien.  No  one,  however,  really  believed  for  a 
moment  that  such  a  sentence  was  likely  to  be  carried  out 
in  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  The  sentence  of  death  was 
changed  into  one  of  transportation  for  life.  Nor  was  even 
this  carried  out.  The  convicts  were  all  sent  to  Australia, 


CHARTISM  AND   YOUNG  IRELAND.  313 

and  a  few  years  after  Mitchel  contrived  to  make  his  escape, 
followed  by  Meagher.  The  manner  of  escape  was  at  least 
of  doubtful  credit  to  the  prisoners,  for  they  were  placed 
under  parole,  and  a  very  nice  question  was  raised  as  to 
whether  they  had  not  broken  their  parole  by  the  attempt  to 
escape.  It  was  a  nice  question,  which  in  the  case  of  men  of 
very  delicate  sense  of  honor  could,  one  would  think,  hardly 
have  arisen  at  all.  The  point  in  Mitchel's  case  was,  that  he 
actually  went  to  the  police  court  within  whose  jurisdiction 
he  was,  formally  and  publicly  announced  to  the  magistrate 
that  he  withdrew  his  parole,  and  invited  the  magistrate  to 
arrest  him  then  and  there.  But  the  magistrate  was  unpre- 
pared for  his  coming,  and  was  quite  thrown  oif  his  guard. 
Mitchel  was  armed,  and  so  was  a  friend  who  accompanied 
him,  and  who  had  planned  and  carried  out  the  escape. 
They  had  horses  waiting  at  the  door,  and  when  they  saw 
that  the  magistrate  did  not  know  what  to  do,  they  left  the 
court,  mounted  the  horses,  and  rode  away.  It  was  contend- 
ed by  Mitchel  and  by  his  companion,  Mr.  P.  J.  Smyth  (af- 
terward a  distinguished  member  of  Parliament),  that  they 
had  fulfilled  all  the  conditions  required  by  the  parole,  and 
had  formally  and  honorably  withdrawn  it.  One  is  only  sur- 
prised how  men  of  honor  could  thus  puzzle  and  deceive 
themselves.  The  understood  condition  of  a  parole  is  that  a 
man  who  intends  to  withdraw  it  shall  place  himself  before 
his  captors  in  exactly  the  same  condition  as  he  was  when 
on  his  pledged  word  of  honor  they  allowed  him  a  compara- 
tive liberty.  It  is  evident  that  a  prisoner  would  never  be 
allowed  to  go  at  large  on  parole  if  he  were  to  make  use  of 
his  liberty  to  arrange  all  the  conditions  of  an  escape,  and, 
when  everything  was  ready,  take  his  captors  by  surprise, 
tell  them  he  was  no  longer  bound  by  the  conditions  of  the 
pledge,  and  that  they  might  keep  him  if  they  could.  This 
was  the  view  taken  by  Smith  O'Brien,  who  declined  to  have 
anything  to  do  with  any  plot  for  escape  while  he  was  on 
parole.  The  advisers  of  the  Crown  recommended  that  a 
conditional  pardon  should  be  given  to  the  gallant  and  un- 
fortunate gentleman  who  had  behaved  in  so  honorable  a 
manner.  Smith  O'Brien  received  a  pardon  on  condition  of 
his  not  retxirning  to  these  islands ;  but  this  condition  was 
withdi-awn  after  a  time,  and  lie  came  back  to  Ireland.  He 
I.— 14 


314  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

died  quietly  in  Wales,  in  1864.  Mitchel  settled  for  awhile 
in  Richmond,  Virginia,  and  became  an  ardent  advocate  of 
slavery  and  an  impassioned  champion  of  the  Southern  rebel- 
lion. He  returned  to  the  North  after  the  rebellion,  and 
more  lately  came  to  Ireland,  where,  owing  to  some  defect  in 
the  criminal  law,  he  could  not  be  arrested,  his  time  of  penal 
servitude  having  expired,  although  he  had  not  served  it.  He 
was  still  a  hero  with  a  certain  class  of  the  people ;  he  was 
put  up  as  a  candidate  for  an  Irish  county,  and  elected.  He 
was  not  allowed  to  enter  the  House  of  Commons,  however ; 
the  election  was  declared  void,  and  a  new  writ  was  issued. 
He  was  elected  again,  and  some  turmoil  was  expected,  when 
suddenly  Mitchel,  who  had  long  been  in  sinking  health,  was 
withdrawn  from  the  controversy  by  death.  He  should  have 
died  before.  The  later  years  of  his  life  were  only  an  anti- 
climax. His  attitude  in  the  dock  in  1848  had  something  of 
dignity  and  heroism  in  it,  and  even  the  stanchest  enemies 
of  his>  cause  admired  him.  He  had  undoubtedly  great  liter- 
ary ability,  and  if  he  had  never  reappeared  in  politics  the 
world  would  have  thought  that  a  really  brilliant  light  had 
been  prematurely  extinguished.  Meagher  served  in  the 
army  of  the  Federal  States  when  the  war  broke  out,  and 
showed  much  of  the  soldier's  spirit  and  capacity.  His  end 
was  premature  and  inglorious.  He  fell  from  the  deck  of  a 
steamer  one  night ;  it  was  dark,  and  there  was  a  strong 
current  running ;  help  came  too  late.  A  false  step,  a 
dark  night,  and  the  muddy  waters  of  the  Missouri  closed 
the  career  that  had  opened  with  so  much  promise  of  bright- 
ness. 

Many  of  the  conspicuous  Young  Irelanders  rose  to  some 
distinction.  Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  the  editor  of  the  Nation, 
who  was  twice  put  on  his  trial  after  the  failure  of  the  insur- 
rection, but  whom  the  jury  would  not  on  either  occasion 
convict,  became  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
afterward  emigrated  to  the  colony  of  Victoria.  He  rose  to 
be  Prime- minister  there,  and  received  knighthood  and  a 
pension.  Thomas  Darcy  M'Gee,  another  prominent  rebel, 
went  to  the  United  States,  and  thence  to  Canada,  where  he 
rose  to  be  a  minister  of  the  Crown.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  loyal  supporters  of  the  British  connection.  His  un- 
timely death  by  the  hand  of  an  assassin  was  lamented  in 


CHARTISM  AND  YOUNG  IRELAND.  315 

England  as  well  as  in  the  colony  be  had  served  so  well. 
Some  of  the  young  Irelanders  remained  in  the  United  States 
and  won  repute ;  others  returned  to  England,  and  of  these 
not  a  few  entered  the  House  of  Commons  and  were  respect- 
ed there,  the  follies  of  their  youth  quite  forgotten  by  their 
colleagues,  even  if  not  disowned  by  themselves.  A  remark- 
able illustration  of  the  spirit  of  fairness  that  generally  per- 
vades the  House  of  Commons  is  found  in  the  fact  that  ev- 
ery one  there  respected  John  Martin,  who  to  the  day  of 
his  death  avowed  himself,  in  Parliament  and  out  of  it,  a  con- 
sistent and  unrepentant  opponent  of  British  rule  in  Ireland. 
He  was  respected  because  of  the  purity  of  his  character  and 
the  transparent  sincerity  of  his  purpose.  Martin  had  been 
devoted  to  Mitchel  in  his  lifetime,  and  he  died  a  few  days 
after  Mitchel's  death. 

The  Young  Ireland  movement  came  and  vanished  like  a 
shadow.  It  never  had  any  reality  or  substance  in  it.  It 
Avas  a  literary  and  poetic  inspiration  altogether.  It  never 
took  the  slightest  hold  of  the  peasantry.  It  hardly  touch- 
ed any  men  of  mature  years.  It  was  a  rather  pretty  play- 
ing at  rebellion.  It  was  an  imitation  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, as  the  Girondists  imitated  the  patriots  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  But  it  might,  perhaps,  have  had  a  chance  of  doing 
memorable  mischief  if  the  policy  of  the  one  only  man  in 
the  business  who  really  was  in  earnest,  and  was  reckless, 
had  been  carried  out.  It  is  another  illustration  of  the  fact, 
which  O'Connell's  movement  had  exemplified  before,  that 
in  Irish  politics  a  climax  cannot  be  repeated  or  recalled. 
There  is  something  fitful  in  all  Irish  agitation.  The  na- 
tional emotion  can  be  wrought  up  to  a  certain  temperature ; 
and  if  at  that  boiling-point  nothing  is  done,  the  heat  sud- 
denly goes  out,  and  no  blowing  of  Cyclopean  bellows  can 
rekindle  it.  The  Repeal  agitation  was  brought  up  to  this 
point  when  the  meeting  at  Clontarf  was  convened ;  the  dis- 
persal of  the  meeting  was  the  end  of  the  whole  agitation. 
With  the  Young  Ireland  movement  the  trial  of  Mitchel 
formed  the  climax.  After  that  a  wise  legislator  would 
have  known  that  there  was  nothing  more  to  fear.  Petion, 
the  revolutionary  Mayor  of  Paris,  knew  that  when  it  rained 
his  partisans  could  do  nothing.  There  were,  in  1848,  ob- 
servant Irishmen  who  knew  that  after  the  Mitchel  climax 


316  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

had  been  reached  the  crowd  would  disperse,  not  to  be  col- 
lected again  for  that  time. 

These  two  agitations,  the  Chartist  and  the  Young  Ireland, 
constituted  what  may  be  called  our  tribute  to  the  power 
of  the  insurrectionary  spirit  that  was  abroad  over  Europe 
in  1848.  In  almost  every  other  European  State  revolution 
raised  its  head  fiercely,  and  fought  out  its  claims  in  the  very 
capital,  under  the  eyes  of  bewildered  royalty.  The  whole 
of  Italy,  from  the  Alps  to  the  Straits  of  Messina,  and  from 
Venice  to  Genoa,  was  thrown  into  convulsion  ;  "  Our  Italy  " 
once  again  "  shone  o'er  with  civil  swords."  There  was  in- 
surrection in  Berlin  and  in  Vienna.  The  Emperor  had  to 
fly  from  the  latter  city  as  the  Pope  had  fled  from  Rome. 
In  Paris  there  came  a  Red  Republican  rising  against  a  Re- 
public that  strove  not  to  be  Red,  and  the  rising  was  crushed 
by  Cavaignac  with  a  terrible  strenuousness  that  made  some 
of  the  streets  of  Paris  literally  to  run  with  blood.  It  was 
a  grim  foreshadowing  of  the  Commune  of  1871.  Another 
remarkable  foreshadowing  of  what  was  to  come  was  seen  in 
the  fact  that  the  Prince  Louis  Napoleon,  long  an  exile  from 
France,  had  been  allowed  to  return  to  it,  and  at  the  close  of 
the  year,  in  the  passion  for  law  and  order  at  any  price  born 
of  the  Red  Republican  excesses,  had  been  elected  President 
of  the  French  Republic.  Hungary  was  in  arms;  Spain  was 
in  convulsion ;  even  Switzerland  was  not  safe.  Our  contri- 
bution to  this  general  commotion  was  to  be  found  in  the 
demonstration  on  Kennington  Common,  and  the  abortive 
attempt  at  a  rising  near  Ballingarry.  There  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  a  truer  tribute  to  the  solid  strength  of  our  system. 
Not  for  one  moment  was  the  political  constitution  of  Eng- 
land seriously  endangered.  Not  for  one  hour  did  the  safety 
of  our  great  communities  require  a  call  upon  the  soldiers  in- 
stead of  upon  the  police.  Not  one  charge  of  cavalry  was 
needed  to  put  down  the  fiercest  outburst  of  the  rebellious 
spirit  in  England.  Not  one  single  execution  took  place. 
The  meaning  of  this  is  clear.  It  is  not  that  there  were  no 
grievances  in  our  system  calling  for  redress.  It  is  not  that 
the  existing  institutions  did  not  bear  heavily  down  on  many 
classes.  It  is  not  that  our  political  or  social  system  was  so 
conspicuously  better  than  that  of  some  European  countries 
which  were  torn  and  ploughed  up  by  revolution.  To  imag- 


DON  PACIFICO.  317 

ine  that  we  owed  our  freedom  from  revolution  to  our  free- 
dom from  serious  grievance,  would  be  to  misread  altogether 
the  lessons  offered  to  our  statesmen  by  that  eventful  year. 
We  have  done  the  work  of  whole  generations  of  Reformers 
in  the  interval  between  this  time  and  that.  We  have  made 
peaceful  reforms,  political,  industrial,  legal,  since  then,  which, 
if  not  to  be  had  otherwise,  would  have  justified  any  appeal 
to  revolution.  There,  however,  we  touch  upon  the  lesson  of 
the  time.  Our  political  and  constitutional  system  rendered 
an  appeal  to  force  unnecessary  and  superfluous.  No  call  to 
arms  was  needed  to  bring  about  any  reform  that  the  com- 
mon judgment  of  the  country  might  demand.  Other  peo- 
ples flew  to  arms  because  they  were  driven  by  despair;  be- 
cause there  was  no  way  in  their  political  constitution  for 
the  influence  of  public  opinion  to  make  itself  justly  felt;  be- 
cause those  who  were  in  power  held  it  by  the  force  of  bay- 
onets, and  not  of  public  agreement.  The  results  of  the  year 
were,  on  the  whole,  unfavorable  to  popular  liberty.  The  re- 
sults of  the  year  that  followed  were  decidedly  reactionary. 
The  time  had  not  come,  in  1848  or  1849,  for  Liberal  princi- 
ples to  assert  themselves.  Their  "great  deed,"  to  quote 
some  of  the  words  of  our  English  poetess,  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning, "  was  too  great."  We  in  this  country  were  saved 
alike  from  the  revolution  and  the  reaction  by  the  universal 
recognition  of  the  fact,  among  all  who  gave  themselves  time 
to  think,  that  public  opinion,  being  the  ultimate  ruling  pow- 
er, was  the  only  authority  to  which  an  appeal  was  needed, 
and  that  in  the  ,end  justice  would  be  done.  All  but  the  very 
wildest  spirits  could  afford  to  wait ;  and  no  revolutionary 
movement  is  really  dangerous  which  is  only  the  work  of  the 
wildest  spirits. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

DON   PACIFICO. 

THE  name  of  Don  Pacifico  was  as  familiar  to  the  world 
some  quarter  of  a  century  ago  as  that  of  M.  Jecker  was 
about  the  time  of  the  French  invasion  of  Mexico.  Don 
Pacifico  became  famous  for  a  season  as  the  man  whose  quar- 


318  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

rcl  had  nearly  brought  on  a  European  war,  caused  a  tem- 
porary disturbance  of  good  relations  between  England  and 
France,  split  up  political  parties  in  England  in  a  manner 
hardly  ever  known  before,  and  established  the  reputation  of 
Lord  Palmerston  as  one  of  the  greatest  Parliamentary  de- 
baters of  his  time.  Among  the  memorable  speeches  deliv- 
ered in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  that  of  Lord  Palmer- 
ston on  the  Don  Pacifico  debate  must  always  take  a  place. 
It  was  not  because  the  subject  of  the  debate  was  a  great 
one,  or  because  there  were  any  grand  principles  involved. 
The  question  originally  in  dispute  was  unutterably  trivial 
and  paltry ;  there  was  no  particular  principle  involved ;  it 
was  altogether  what  is  called  in  commercial  litigation  a 
question  of  account;  a  controversy  about  the  amount  and 
time  of  payment  of  a  doubtful  claim.  Nor  was  the  speech 
delivered  by  Lord  Palmerston  one  of  the  grand  historical 
displays  of  oratory  that,  even  when  the  sound  of  them  is 
lost,  send  their  echoes  to  "  roll  from  soul  to  soul."  It  was 
not  like  one  of  Burke's  great  speeches,  or  one  of  Chatham's. 
It  was  not  one  calculated  to  provoke  keen  literary  contro- 
versy, like  Sheridan's  celebrated  "  Begum  speech,"  which  all 
contemporaries  held  to  be  unrivalled,  but  which  a  later  gen- 
eration assumes  to  have  been  rather  flashy  rhetoric.  There 
are  no  passages  of  splendid  eloquence  in  Palmerston's  Pa- 
cifico speech.  Its  great  merit  was  its  wonderful  power  as  a 
contribution  to  Parliamentary  argument ;  as  a  masterly  ap- 
peal to  the  feelings,  the  prejudices,  and  the  passions  of  the 
House  of  Commons;  as  a  complete  Parliamentary  victory 
over  a  combination  of  the  most  influential,  eloquent,  and 
heterogeneous  opponents. 

Don  Pacifico  was  a  Jew,  a  Portuguese  by  extraction,  but 
a  native  of  Gibraltar,  and  a  British  subject.  His  house  in 
Athens  was  attacked  and  plundered  in  the  open  day,  on 
April  4th,  1847,  by  an  Athenian  mob,  who  were  headed,  it 
was  affirmed,  by  two  sons  of  the  Greek  Minister  of  War. 
The  attack  came  about  in  this  way :  It  had  been  customary 
in  Greek  towns  to  celebrate  Easter  by  burning  an  effigy  of 
Judas  Iscariot.  In  1847  the  police  of  Athens  were  ordered 
to  prevent  this  performance,  and  the  mob,  disappointed  of 
their  favorite  amusement,  ascribed  the  new  orders  to  the 
influence  of  the  Jews.  Don  Pacifico's  house  happened  to 


DON   PACIFICO.  319 

stand  near  the  spot  where  the  Judas  was  annually  burnt ; 
Don  Pacifico  was  known  to  be  a  Jew,  and  the  anger  of  the 
mob  was  wreaked  upon  him  accordingly.  There  could  be 
no  doubt  that  the  attack  was  lawless,  and  that  the  Greek 
authorities  took  no  trouble  to  protect  Pacifico  against  it. 
Don  Pacifico  made  a  claim  against  the  Greek  Government 
for  compensation.  He  estimated  his  losses,  direct  and  in- 
direct, at  nearly  thirty-two  thousand  pounds  sterling.  An- 
other claim  was  made  at  the  same  time  by  another  British 
subject,  a  man  of  a  very  different  stamp  from  Don  Pacifico. 
This  was  Mr.  Finlay,  the  historian  of  Greece.  Mr.  Finlay 
had  gone  out  to  Greece  in  the  enthusiastic  days  of  Byron 
and  Cochrane  and  Church  and  Hastings;  and  he  settled  in 
Athens  when  the  independence  of  Greece  had  been  estab- 
lished. Some  of  his  land  had  been  taken  for  the  purpose 
of  rounding  off  the  new  palace  gardens  of  King  Otho ;  and 
Mr.  Finlay  had  declined  to  accept  the  terms  offered  by  the 
Greek  Government,  to  which  other  land-owners  in  the  same 
position  as  himself  had  assented.  Some  stress  was  laid  by 
Lord  Palmerston's  antagonists,  in  the  course  of  the  debate, 
on  the  fact  that  Mr.  Finlay  thus  stood  out  apart  from  other 
land-owners  in  Athens.  Mr.  Finlay,  however,  had  a  perfect 
right  to  stand  out  for  any  price  he  thought  fit.  He  was  in 
the  same  position  as  a  Greek  resident  of  London  or  Man- 
chester whose  land  is  taken  for  the  purposes  of  a  railway  or 
other  public  improvement,  and  who  declines  to  accept  the 
amount  of  compensation  tendered  for  it  in  the  first  instance. 
The  peculiarity  of  the  case  was  that  Mr.  Finlay  was  not 
left,  as  the  supposed  Greek  gentleman  assuredly  would  be, 
to  make  good  his  claims  for  himself  in  the  courts  of  law. 
Neither  Don  Pacifico  nor  Mr.  Finlay  had  appealed  to  the 
law  courts  at  all.  But  about  this  time  our  Foreign  Office 
had  had  several  little  complaints  against  the  Greek  authori- 
ties. We  had  taken  so  considerable  a  part  in  setting  up 
Greece  that  our  ministers  not  unnaturally  thought  Greece 
ought  to  show  her  gratitude  by  attending  a  little  more 
closely  to  our  advice.  On  the  other  hand,  Lord  Palmerston 
had  made  up  his  mind  that  there  was  constant  intrigue  go- 
ing on  against  our  interests  among  the  foreign  diplomatists 
in  Athens.  He  was  convinced  that  France  was  perpetually 
plotting  against  us  there,  and  that  Russia  was  watching  an 


320  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

opportunity  to  supersede  once  for  all  our  influence  by  com- 
pletely establishing  hers.  Don  Pacifico's  sheets,  counter- 
panes, and  gold  watch  had  the  advantage  of  being  made  the 
subject  of  a  trial  of  strength  between  England  on  the  one 
side,  and  France  and  Russia  on  the  other. 

There  had  been  other  complaints  as  well.  Ionian  subjects 
of  her  Majesty  had  sent  in  remonstrances  against  lawless  or 
high-handed  proceedings;  and  a  midshipman  of  her  Majes- 
ty's ship  fhntome,  landing  from  a  boat  at  night  on  the  shore 
of  Patras,  had  been  arrested  by  mistake.  None  of  these 
questions  would  seem  at  first  sight  to  wear  a  very  grave 
international  character.  All  they  needed  for  settlement,  it 
might  be  thought,  was  a  little  open  discussion,  and  the  exer- 
cise of  some  good  sense  and  moderation  on  both  sides.  It 
cannot  be  doubted  that  the  Greek  authorities  were  lax  and 
careless,  and  that  acts  had  been  done  which  they  could  not 
justify.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  they  do  not  appear  to 
have  tried  to  justify  some  of  them;  but  they  were  of  opin- 
ion that  certain  of  the  claims  were  absurdly  exaggerated, 
and  in  this  belief  they  proved  to  be  well  sustained.  The 
Greeks  were  very  poor,  and  also  very  dilatory ;  and  they 
gave  Lord  Palmerston  a  reasonable  excuse  for  a  little  impa- 
tience. Unluckily  Lord  Palmerston  became  possessed  with 
the  idea  that  the  French  minister  in  Greece  was  secretly 
setting  the  Greek  Government  on  to  resist  our  claims;  for 
the  Foreign  Office  had  made  the  claims  ours.  They  had 
lumped  up  the  outrages  on  Ionian  seamen,  the  mistaken  ar- 
rest of  the  midshipman  (who  had  been  released  with  apol- 
ogies the  moment  his  nationality  and  position  were  discov- 
ered), Mr.  Finlay's  land,  and  Don  Pacifico's  household  fur- 
niture in  one  claim,  converted  it  into  a  national  demand, 
and  insisted  that  Greece  must  pay  up  within  a  given  time 
or  take  the  consequences.  Greece  hesitated,  and  according- 
ly the  British  fleet  was  ordered  to  the  Pira3us.  It  made  its 
appearance  very  promptly  there,  and  seized  all  the  Greek 
vessels  belonging  to  the  Government  and  to  private  mer- 
chants that  were  found  within  the  waters. 

The  Greek  Government  appealed  to  France  and  Russia  as 
Powers  joined  with  us  in  the  treaty  to  protect  the  indepen- 
dence of  Greece.  France  and  Russia  were  both  disposed  to 
make  bitter  complaint  of  not  having  been  consulted,  in  the 


DON  PACIFICO.  321 

first  instance,  by  the  British  Government;  nor  was  their 
feeling  greatly  softened  by  Lord  Palmerston's  peremptory 
reply  that  it  was  all  a  question  between  England  and  Greece, 
with  which  no  other  Power  had  any  business  to  interfere. 
The  Russian  Government  wrote  an  angry  and,  indeed,  an  of- 
fensive remonstrance.  The  Russian  Foreign  Minister  spoke 
of  "  the  very  painful  impression  produced  upon  the  mind  of 
the  Emperor  by  the  unexpected  acts  of  violence  which  the 
British  authorities  had  just  directed  against  Greece;"  and 
asked  if  Great  Britain,  "  abusing  the  advantages  which  are 
afforded  to  her  by  her  immense  maritime  superiority,"  in- 
tended to  "  disengage  herself  from  all  obligation,"  and  to 
"  authorize  all  Great  Powers,  on  every  fitting  opportunity,  to 
recognize  toward  the  weak  no  other  rule  but  their  own  will, 
no  other  right  but  their  own  physical  strength."  The  French 
Government,  perhaps  under  the  pressure  of  difficulties  and 
uncertain  affairs  at  home,  in  their  unsettled  state  showed  a 
better  temper,  and  intervened  only  in  the  interests  of  peace 
and  good  understanding.  Something  like  a  friendly  arbitra- 
tion was  accepted  from  France,  and  the  French  Government 
sent  a  special  representative  to  Athens  to  try  to  come  to 
terms  with  our  minister  there.  The  difficulties  appeared 
likely  to  be  adjusted.  All  the  claims,  except  those  of  Don 
Pacifico,  were  matter  of  easy  settlement,  and  at  first  the 
French  commissioner  seemed  even  willing  to  accept  Don 
Pacifico's  stupendous  valuation  of  his  household  goods.  But 
Pacifico  had  introduced  other  demands  of  a  more  shadowy 
character.  He  said  that  he  had  certain  claims  on  the  Port- 
uguese Government,  and  that  the  papers  on  which  these 
claims  rested  for  support  were  destroyed  in  the  sacking  of 
his  house,  and  therefore  he  felt  entitled  to  ask  for  £26,618, 
as  compensation  on  that  account  also.  The  French  commis- 
sioner was  a  little  staggered  at  this  demand,  and  declined 
to  accede  to  it  without  further  consideration;  and  as  our 
minister,  Mr.  Wyse,  did  not  bejieve  he  had  any  authority  to 
abate  any  of  the  now  national  demand,  the  negotiation  was 
for  the  time  broken  off.  In  the  mean  time,  however,  negotia- 
tions had  still  been  going  on  between  the  English  and  French 
Governments  in  London,  and  these  had  resulted  in  a  conven- 
tion disposing  of  all  the  disputed  claims.  By  the  terms  of 
this  agreement  a  sum  of  eight  thousand  five  hundred  pounds 

14* 


322  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

was  to  be  paid  by  the  Greek  Government,  to  be  divided 
among  the  various  claimants;  and  Greece  was  also  to  pay 
whatever  sum  might  be  found  to  be  fairly  due  on  account 
of  Don  Pacifico's  Portuguese  claims,  after  these  had  been  in- 
vestigated by  arbitrators.  This  would  seem  a  very  satisfac- 
tory and  honorable  arrangement.  But  some  demon  of  mis- 
chief appeared  to  have  this  unlucky  affair  in  charge  from  the 
first.  The  two  negotiations  going  on  in  London  and  Ath- 
ens simultaneously  got  in  each  other's  way.  Instructions  as 
to  what  had  been  agreed  to  in  London  were  not  forwarded 
to  Athens  quickly  enough  by  the  English  Government,  and 
when  the  French  Government  sent  out  to  their  commission- 
er the  news  of  the  convention,  he  found  that  Mr.  Wyse  knew 
nothing  about  the  matter,  and  had  no  authority  which,  as  he 
conceived,  would  have  warranted  him  in  departing  from  the 
course  of  action  he  was  following  out.  Mr.  Wyse,  therefore, 
proceeded  with  his  measures  of  coercion,  and  at  length  the 
Greek  Government  gave  way.  The  convention  having,  how- 
ever, been  made  in  the  mean  time  in  London,  there  then  arose 
a  question  as  to  whether  that  convention  or  the  terms  ex- 
torted at  Athens  should  be  the  basis  of  arrangement.  Over 
this  trumpery  dispute,  which  a  few  words  of  frank  good  sense 
and  good  temper  on  both  sides  would  have  easily  settled,  a 
new  quarrel  seemed  at  one  time  likely  to  break  out  between 
England  and  France.  The  French  Government  actually 
withdrew  their  ambassador,  M.  Drouyri  de  Lhuys,  from  Lon- 
don ;  and  there  was  for  a  short  time  a  general  alarm  over 
Europe.  But  the  question  in  dispute  was  really  too  small 
and  insignificant  for  any  two  rational  governments  to  make 
it  a  cause  of  serious  quarrel ;  and  after  awhile  our  Govern- 
ment gave  way,  and  agreed  to  an  arrangement  which  was, 
in  the  main,  all  that  France  desired.  When,  after  a  long 
lapse  of  time,  the  arbitrators  came  to  settle  the  claims  of 
Don  Pacifico,  it  was  found  that  he  was  entitled  to  about  one- 
thirtieth  of  the  sum  he  had  originally  demanded.  He  had 
assessed  all  his  claims  on  the  same  liberal  and  fanciful  scale 
as  that  which  he  adopted  in  estimating  the  value  of  his 
household  property.  Don  Pacifico,  it  seems,  charged  in  his 
bill  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  sterling  for  a  bedstead, 
thirty  pounds  for  the  sheets  of  the  bed,  twenty-five  pounds 
for  two  coverlets,  and  ten  pounds  for  a  pillow-case.  Cleopa- 


DON  PACIFICO.  323 

tra  might  have  been  contented  with  bed  furniture  so  luxuri- 
ous as  Don  Pacifico  represented  himself  to  have  in  his  com- 
mon use.  The  jewellery  of  his  wife  and  daughters  he  esti- 
mated at  two  thousand  pounds.  He  gave  no  vouchers  for 
any  of  these  claims,  saying  that  all  his  papers  had  been  de- 
stroyed by  the  mob.  It  seemed,  too,  that  he  had  always 
lived  in  a  humble  sort  of  way,  and  was  never  supposed  by 
his  neighbors  to  possess  such  splendor  of  ornament  and 
household  goods. 

While  the  controversy  between  the  English  and  French 
Governments  was  yet  unfinished,  a  Parliamentary  controver- 
sy between  the  former  Government  and  the  Opposition  in 
the  House  of  Lords  was  to  begin.  Lord  Stanley  proposed 
a  resolution  which  was  practically  a  vote  of  censure  on  the 
Government.  The  resolution,  in  fact,  expressed  the  regret 
of  the  House  to  find  that  "various  claims  against  the  Greek 
Government,  doubtful  in  point  of  justice,  or  exaggerated  in 
amount,  have  been  enforced  by  coercive  measures,  directed 
against  the  commerce  and  people  of  Greece,  and  calculated 
to  endanger  the  continuance  of  our  friendly  relations  with 
foreign  Powers."  The  resolution  was  carried,  after  a  debate 
of  great  spirit  and  energy,  by  a  majority  of  thirty -seven. 
Lord  Palmerston  was  not  dismayed.  A  ministry  is  seldom 
greatly  troubled  by  an  adverse  vote  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
The  Foreign  Secretary,  writing  about  the  result  of  the  di- 
vision the  following  day,  merely  said :  "  We  were  beaten  last 
night  in  the  Lords  by  a  larger  majority  than  we  had,  up 
to  the  last  moment,  expected ;  but  when  we  took  office  we 
knew  that  our  opponents  had  a  larger  pack  in  the  Lords 
than  we  had,  and  that  whenever  the  two  packs  were  to  be 
fully  dealt  out,  theirs  would  show  a  larger  number  than 
ours."  Still,  it  was  necessary  that  something  should  be  done 
in  the  Commons  to  counterbalance  the  stroke  of  the  Lords, 
and  accordingly  Mr.  Roebuck,  acting  as  an  independent  mem- 
ber, although  on  this  occasion  in  harmony  with  the  Govern- 
ment, gave  notice  of  a  resolution  which  boldly  affirmed  that 
the  principles  on  which  the  foreign  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment had  been  regulated  were  "  such  as  were  calculated  to 
maintain  the  honor  and  dignity  of  this  country,  and  in  times 
of  unexampled  difficulty  to  preserve  peace  between  England 
and  the  various  nations  of  the  world."  On  June  24th,  1850, 


324  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

a  night  memorable  in  Parliamentary  annals  as  the  opening 
night  of  the  debate  which  established  Lord  Palmerston's  po- 
sition as  a  great  leader  of  party,  Mr.  Roebuck  brought  for- 
ward his  resolution. 

A  reader  unaccustomed  to  Parliamentary  tactics  may  fail 
to  observe  the  peculiar  shrewdness  of  the  resolution.  It  was 
framed,  at  least  it  reads  as  if  it  had  been  framed,  to  accom- 
plish one  purpose  while  professing  to  serve  another.  It  was 
intended,  of  course,  as  a  reply  to  the  censure  of  the  House 
of  Lords.  It  was  to  proclaim  to  the  world  that  the  Repre- 
sentative Chamber  had  reversed  the  decision  of  the  House 
of  Peers,  and  acquitted  the  ministry.  But  what  did  Mr. 
Roebuck's  resolution  actually  do?  Did  it  affirm  that  the 
Government  had  acted  rightly  with  regard  to  Greece  ?  The 
dealings  with  Greece  were  expressly  censured  by  the  House 
of  Lords;  but  Mr.  Roebuck  proposed  to  affirm  that  the  gen- 
eral policy  of  the  ministry  deserved  the  approval  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  was  well  known  that  there  were 
many  men  of  Liberal  opinions  in  the  House  of  Commons  who 
did  not  approve  of  the  course  pursued  with  regard  to  Greece, 
but  who  would  yet  have  been  very  sorry  to  give  a  vote 
which  might  contribute  to  the  overthrow  of  a  Liberal  Gov- 
ernment. The  resolution  was  so  framed  as  to  offer  to  all 
such  an  opportunity  of  supporting  the  Government,  and  yet 
satisfying  their  consciences.  For  it  might  be  thus  put  to 
them:  "You  think  the  Government  were  too  harsh  with 
Greece?  Perhaps  you  are  right.  But  this  resolution  does 
not  say  that  they  were  quite  free  of  blame  in  their  way  of 
dealing  with  Greece.  It  only  says  that  their  policy,  on  the 
whole,  has  been  sound  and  successful ;  and  of  course  you 
must  admit  that.  They  may  have  made  a  little  mistake  with 
regard  to  Greece ;  but  admitting  that,  do  you  not  still  think 
that  on  the  whole  they  had  done  very  well,  and  much  better 
than  any  Tory  minister  would  be  likely  to  do?  This  is  all 
that  Roebuck's  resolution  asks  you  to  affirm;  and  you  really 
cannot  vote  against  it." 

A  large  number  of  Liberals  were,  no  doubt,  influenced  by 
this  view  of  the  situation,  and  by  the  framing  of  the  resolu- 
tion. But  there  were  some  who  could  not  be  led  into  any 
approval  of  the  particular  transaction  which  the  resolution, 
if  not  intended  to  cover,  would  certainly  be  made  to  cover. 


DON  PACIFICO.  325 

There  were  others,  too,  who,  even  on  the  broader  field  opened 
purposely  up  by  the  resolution,  honestly  believed  that  Lord 
Palmerston's  general  policy  was  an  incessant  violation  of 
the  principle  of  non-intervention,  and  was,  therefore,  injuri- 
ous to  the  character  and  the  safety  of  the  country.  In  a 
prolonged  and  powerful  debate  some  of  the  foremost  men  on 
both  sides  of  the  House  opposed  and  denounced  the  policy  of 
the  Government,  for  which,  as  every  one  knew,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  was  almost  exclusively  responsible.  "  The  allied  troops 
who  led  the  attack,"  says  Mr.  Evelyn  Ashley,  in  his  life  of 
Lord  Palmerston,  "  were  English  Protectionists  and  foreign 
Absolutists."  It  is  strange  that  an  able  and  usually  fair- 
minded  man  should  be  led  into  such  absurdity.  Lord  Palm- 
erston himself  called  it  "  a  shot  fired  by  a  foreign  conspir- 
acy, aided  and  abetted  by  a  domestic  intrigue."  But  Lord 
Palmerston  was  the  minister  personally  assailed,  and  might 
be  excused,  perhaps,  for  believing  at  the  moment  that  war- 
ring monarchs  were  giving  the  fatal  wound,  and  that  the 
attack  on  him  was  the  work  of  the  combined  treachery  of 
Europe.  A  historian  looking  back  upon  the  events  after  an 
interval  of  a  quarter  of  a  century  ought  to  be  able  to  take 
a  calmer  view  of  things.  Among  the  "English  Protection- 
ists" who  took  a  prominent  part  in  condemning  the  policy 
of  Lord  Palmerston  were  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Cobden,  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  Sir  William  Molesworth,  and  Mr.  Sidney  Her- 
bert. In  the  House  of  Lords,  Lord  Brougham,  Lord  Canning, 
and  Lord  Aberdeen  had  supported  the  resolution  of  Lord 
Stanley.  The  truth  is  that  Lord  Palmerston's  proceedings 
were  fairly  open  to  difference  of  judgment,  even  on  the  part 
of  the  most  devoted  Liberals  and  the  most  independent 
thinkers.  It  did  not  need  that  a  man  should  be  a  Protec- 
tionist or  an  Absolutist  to  explain  his  entire  disapproval  of 
such  a  course  of  conduct  as  that  which  had  been  followed 
out  with  regard  to  Greece.  It  seems  to  us  now,  quietly 
looking  back  at  the  whole  story,  hardly  possible  that  a  man 
with,  for  example,  the  temperament  and  the  general  views 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  could  have  appi'oved  of  such  a  policy;  ob- 
viously impossible  that  a  man  like  Mr.  Cobden  could  have 
approved  of  it.  These  men  simply  followed  their  judgment 
and  their  conscience. 

The  principal  interest  of  the  debate  now  rests  in  the  man- 


326  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ner  of  Lord  Palmerstori's  defence.  The  speech  was,  indeed, 
a  masterpiece  of  Parliamentary  argument  and  address.  It 
was,  in  part,  a  complete  exposition  and  defence  of  the  whole 
course  of  the  foreign  policy  which  the  noble  speaker  had 
directed.  But  although  the  resolution  treated  only  of  the 
general  policy  of  the  Government,  Lord  Palmerston  did  not 
fail  to  make  a  special  defence  of  his  action  toward  Greece. 
He  based  his  vindication  of  this  particular  chapter  of  his 
policy  on  the  ground  which,  of  all  others,  gave  him  most  ad- 
vantage in  addressing  a  Parliamentary  assembly.  He  con- 
tended that  in  all  he  had  done  he  had  been  actuated  by  the 
resolve  that  the  poorest  claimant  who  bore  the  name  of  an 
English  citizen  should  be  protected  by  the  whole  strength 
of  England  against  the  oppression  of  a  foreign  Government. 
His  speech  was  an  appeal  to  all  the  elementary  emotions 
of  manhood  and  citizenship  and  good-fellowship.  To  vote 
against  him  seemed  to  be  to  declare  that  England  was  un- 
able or  unwilling  to  protect  her  children.  A  man  appeared 
to  be  guilty  of  an  unpatriotic  and  ignoble  act  who  censured 
the  minister  whose  only  error,  if  error  it  were,  was  a  too 
proud  and  generous  resolve  to  make  the  name  of  England 
and  the  rights  of  Englishmen  respected  throughout  the 
world.  A  good  deal  of  ridicule  had  been  heaped,  not  unnat- 
urally, on  Don  Pacifico,  his  claims,  his  career,  and  his  costly 
bed  furniture.  Lord  Palmerston  turned  that  very  ridicule 
to  good  account  for  his  own  cause.  He  repelled  with  a 
warmth  of  seemingly  generous  indignation  the  suggestion 
that  because  a  man  was  lowly,  pitiful,  even  ridiculous,  even 
of  doubtful  conduct  in  his  earlier  career,  therefore  he  was 
one  with  whom  a  foreign  Government  was  not  bound  to  ob- 
serve any  principles  of  fair  dealing  at  all.  He  protested 
against  having  serious  things  treated  jocosely;  as  if  any 
man  in  Parliament  had  ever  treated  serious  things  more 
often  in  a  jocose  spirit.  He  protested  against  having  the 
House  kept  "  in  a  roar  of  laughter  at  the  poverty  of  one  suf- 
ferer, or  at  the  miserable  habitation  of  another;  at  the  na- 
tionality of  one  man,  or  the  religion  of  another ;  as  if  because 
a  man  was  poor  he  might  be  bastinadoed  and  tortured  with 
impunity,  as  if  a  man  who  was  born  in  Scotland  might  be 
robbed  without  redress,  or  because  a  man  is  of  the  Jewish 
persuasion  he  is  a  fair  mark  for  any  outrage."  Lord  Palmer- 


DON  PACIFICO.  327 

ston  had  also  a  great  advantage  given  to  him  by  the  argu- 
ment of  some  of  his  opponents,  that  whatever  the  laws  of  a 
foreign  country,  a  stranger  has  only  to  abide  by  them,  and 
that  a  Government  claiming  redress  for  any  wrong  done  to 
one  of  its  subjects  is  completely  answered  by  the  statement 
that  he  has  suffered  only  as  inhabitants  of  the  country  them- 
selves have  suffered.  The  argument  against  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  was  pushed  entirely  too  far  in  this  instance,  and  it  gave 
him  one  of  his  finest  opportunities  for  reply.  It  is  true,  as 
a  general  rule  in  the  intercourse  of  nations,  that  a  stranger 
who  goes  voluntarily  into  a  country  is  expected  to  abide  by 
its  laws,  and  that  his  Government  will  not  protect  him  from 
their  ordinary  operation  in  every  case  where  it  may  seem  to 
press  hardly  or  even  unfairly  against  him.  But  in  this  un- 
derstanding is  always  involved  a  distinct  assumption  that 
the  laws  of  the  State  are  to  be  such  as  civilization  would 
properly  recognize,  supposing  that  the  State  in  question 
pi-ofesses  to  be  a  civilized  State.  It  also  distinctly  assumed 
that  the  State  must  be  able  and  willing  to  enforce  its  own 
laws  where  they  are  fairly  invoked  on  behalf  of  a  foreigner. 
If,  for  instance,  a  foreigner  has  a  just  claim  against  some  con- 
tinental Government,  and  that  Government  will  not  recog- 
nize the  claim,  or,  recognizing  it,  will  not  satisfy  it,  and  the 
Government  of  the  injured  man  intervenes  and  asks  that  his 
claim  shall  be  met — it  would  never  be  accounted  a  sufficient 
answer  to  say  that  many  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  country 
had  been  treated  just  in  the  same  way,  and  had  got  no  re- 
dress. If  there  were  a  law  in  Turkey,  or  any  other  slave- 
owning  State,  that  a  man  who  could  not  pay  his  debts  was 
liable  to  have  his  wife  and  daughter  sold  into  slavery,  it  is 
certain  that  no  Government  like  that  of  England  would  h'ear 
of  the  application  of  such  a  law  to  the  family  of  a  poor  Eng- 
lish trader  settled  in  Constantinople.  There  is  no  clear  rule 
easy  to  be  laid  down  ;  perhaps  there  can  be  no  clear  rule  on 
the  subject  at  all.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  govei'nments 
of  all  civilized  countries  do  exercise  a  certain  protectorate 
over  their  subjects  in  foreign  countries,  and  do  insist  in  ex- 
treme cases  that  the  laws  of  the  country  shall  not  be  applied 
or  denied  to  them  in  a  manner  which  a  native  resident  might 
think  himself  compelled  to  endure  without  protest.  It  is 
not  even  so  in  the  case  of  manifestly  harsh  and  barbarous 


A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

laws  alone,  or  of  the  denial  of  justice  in  a  harsh  and  barbar- 
ous way.  The  principle  prevails  even  in  regard  to  laws 
which  are  in  themselves  unexceptionable  and  necessary. 
No  Government,  for  example,  will  allow  one  of  its  subjects 
living  in  a  foreign  country  to  be  brought  under  the  law  for 
the  levying  of  the  conscription  there,  and  compelled  to  serve 
in  the  army  of  the  foreign  State. 

All  this  only  shows  that  the  opponents  of  Lord  Palmerston 
made  a  mistake  when  they  endeavored  to  obtain  any  gen- 
eral assent  to  the  principle  that  a  minister  does  wrong  who 
asks  for  his  fellow-subjects  at  the  hands  of  a  foreign  Gov- 
ernment any  better  treatment  than  that  which  the  Govern- 
ment in  question  administers,  and  without  revolt,  to  its  own 
people.  Lord  Palmerston  was  not  the  man  to  lose  so  splen- 
did an  opportunity.  He  really  made  it  appear  as  if  the 
question  between  him  and  his  opponents  was  that  of  the 
protection  of  Englishmen  abroad ;  as  if  he  were  anxious 
to  look  after  their  lives  and  safety,  while  his  opponents  were 
urging  the  odious  principle  that  when  once  an  Englishman 
put  his  foot  on  a  foreign  shore  his  own  Government  re- 
nounced all  intent  to  concern  themselves  with  any  fate  that 
might  befall  him.  Here  was  a  new  turn  given  to  the  de- 
bate, a  new  opportunity  afforded  to  those  who,  while  they 
did  not  approve  exactly  of  what  had  been  done  with  Greece, 
were  nevertheless  anxious  to  support  the  general  principles 
of  Lord  Palmcrston's  foreign  policy.  The  speech  was  a 
marvellous  appeal  to  what  are  called  "English  interests." 
In  a  peroration  of  thrilling  power  Lord  Palmerston  asked 
for  the  verdict  of  the  House  to  decide  "  whether,  as  the  Ro- 
man in  days  of  old  held  himself  free  from  indignity  when 
he  could  say  'Civis  Romanus  sum,'  so  also  a  British  subject, 
in  whatever  land  he  may  be,  shall  feel  confident  that  the 
watchful  eye  and  the  strong  arm  of  England  will  protect 
him  against  injustice  and  wi'ong." 

When  Lord  Palmerston  closed  his  speech  the  overwhelm- 
ing plaudits  of  the  House  foretold  the  victory  he  had  won. 
It  was,  indeed,  a  masterpiece  of  telling  defence.  The  speech 
occupied  some  five  hours  in  delivery.  It  was  spoken,  as 
Mr.  Gladstone  afterward  said,  from  the  dusk  of  one  day  to 
the  dawn  of  the  next.  It  was  spoken  without  the  help  of  a 
single  note.  Lord  Palmerston  always  wisely  thought  that 


DON   PACIFICO.  329 

in  order  to  have  full  command  of  such  an  audience  a  man 
should,  if  possible,  never  use  notes.  He  was  quite  conscious 
of  his  own  lack  of  the  higher  gifts  of  imagination  and  emo- 
tion that  make  the  great  orator;  but  he  knew  also  what  a 
splendid  weapon  of  attack  and  defence  was  his  fluency  and 
readiness,  and  he  was  not  willing  .to  weaken  the  effect  of 
its  spontaneity  by  the  interposition  of  a  single  note.  All 
this  great  speech,  therefore,  full  as  it  was  of  minute  details, 
names,  dates,  figures,  references  of  all  kinds,  was  delivered 
with  the  same  facility,  the  same  lack  of  effort,  the  same  ab- 
sence of  any  adventitious  aids  to  memory,  which  character- 
ized Palmerston's  ordinary  style  when  he  answered  a  simple 
question.  Nothing  could  be  more  complete  than  Palmer- 
ston's success.  "Civis  Romanus"  settled  the  matter.  Who 
was  in  the  House  of  Commons  so  rude  that  would  not  be  a 
Roman?  Who  was  there  so  lacking  in  patriotic  spirit  that 
would  not  have  his  countrymen  as  good  as  any  Roman  citi- 
zen of  them  all?  It  was  to  little  purpose  that  Mr.  Gladstone, 
in  a  speech  of  singular  argumentative  power,  pointed  out  that 
"  a  Roman  citizen  was  the  member  of  a  privileged  caste,  of 
a  victorious  and  conquering  nation,  of  a  nation  that  held  all 
others  bound  down  by  the  strong  arm  of  power — which  had 
one  law  for  him  and  another  for  the  rest  of  the  world,  which 
asserted  in  his  favor  principles  which  it  denied  to  all  others." 
It  was  in  vain  that  Mr.  Gladstone  asked  whether  Lord  Palm- 
erston  thought  that  was  the  position  which  it  would  become 
a  civilized  and  Christian  nation  like  England  to  claim  for 
her  citizens.  The  glory  of  being  a  " civis  Romanus"  was 
far  too  strong  for  any  mere  argument  drawn  from  fact  and 
common-sense  to  combat  against  it.  The  phrase  had  carried 
the  day.  When  Mr.  Cockburn,  in  supporting  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's policy,  quoted  from  classical  authority  to  show  that 
the  Romans  had  always  avenged  any  wrongs  done  to  their 
citizens,  and  cited  the  words,  "  Quot  bella  majores  nostri 
suscepti  erint,  quot  cives  Roman!  injuria  affecti  sunt,  navicu- 
larii  retenti,  mercatores  spoliati  esse  dicerentur,"  the  House 
cheered  more  tumultuously  than  ever.  In  vain  was  the  calm, 
grave,  studiously  moderate  remonstrance  of  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
who,  while  generously  declaring  that  Palmerston's  speech 
"  made  us  all  proud  of  the  man  who  delivered  it,"  yet  re- 
corded his  firm  protest  against  the  style  of  policy  which 


330  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Palmerston's  eloquence  had  endeavored  to  glorify.  The 
victory  was  all  with  Palmerston.  He  had,  in  the  words  of 
Shakspeare's  Rosalind,  wrestled  well,  and  overthrown  more 
than  his  enemies. 

After  a  debate  of  four  nights,  a  majority  of  forty-six  was 
given  for  the  resolution.  The  ministry  came  out  not  only 
absolved  but  triumphant.  The  odd  thing  about  the  whole 
proceeding  is  that  the  ministers  in  general  heartily  disap- 
proved of  the  sort  of  policy  which  Palmerston  put  so  ener- 
getically into  action  —  at  least  they  disapproved,  if  not  his 
principles,  yet  certainly  his  way  of  enforcing  them.  Before 
this  debate  carne  on,  Lord  John  Russell  had  made  up  his 
mind  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  him  to  remain  in  office 
with  Lord  Palmerston  as  Foreign  Secretary.  None  the  less, 
however,  did  Lord  John  Russell  defend  the  policy  of  the 
Foreign  Office  in  a  speech  which  Palmerston  himself  de- 
scribed as  "admirable  and  first-rate."  The  ministers  felt 
bound  to  stand  by  the  actions  which  they  had  not  repudi- 
ated at  the  time  when  they  were  done.  They  could  not 
allow  Lord  Palmerston  to  be  separated  from  them  in  polit- 
ical responsibility  when  they  had  not  separated  themselves 
from  moral  responsibility  for  his  proceedings  in  time.  There- 
fore they  had  to  defend  in  Parliament  what  they  did  not 
pretend  to  approve  in  pri-vate.  The  theory  of  a  cabinet  al- 
ways united  when  attacked  rendered,  doubtless,  such  a  course 
of  proceeding  necessary  in  Parliamentary  tactics.  It  would, 
perhaps,  be  hard  to  make  it  seem  quite  satisfactory  to  the 
simple  and  unsophisticated  mind.  No  part  of  our  duty  calls 
on  us  to  attempt  such  a  task.  It  was  a  famous  victory — we 
must  only  settle  the  question  as  old  Caspar  disposed  of  the 
doubts  about  the  propriety  of  the  praise  given  to  the  Duke 
of  Marlborough  and  "  our  good  Prince  Eugene."  "  It  is  not 
telling  a  lie,"  says  some  one  in  Thackeray,  "  it  is  only  voting 
with  your  party."  But  Thackeray  had  never  been  in  the 
House  of  Commons. 

Of  many  fine  speeches  made  during  this  brilliant  debate 
we  must  notice  one  in  particular.  It  was  that  of  Mr.  Cock- 
burn,  then  member  for  Southampton  —  a  speech  to  which 
allusion  has  already  been  made.  Never  in  our  time  has  a 
reputation  been  more  suddenly,  completely,  and  deservedly 
made  than  Mr.  Cockburn  won  by  his  brilliant  display  of  in- 


DON   PACIFICO.  331 

genious  argument  and  stirring  words.  The  manner  of  the 
speaker  lent  additional  effect  to  his  clever  and  captivating 
eloquence.  He  had  a  clear,  sweet,  penetrating  voice,  a  flu- 
ency that  seemed  so  easy  as  to  make  listeners  sometimes 
fancy  that  it  ought  to  cost  no  effort,  and  a  grace  of  gestures 
such  as  it  must  be  owned  the  courts  of  law  where  he  had 
had  his  training  do  not  often  teach.  Mr.  Cockburn  defend- 
ed the  policy  of  Palmerston  with  an  effect  only  inferior  to 
that  produced  by  Palmerston's  own  speech,  and  with  a  rhe- 
torical grace  and  finish  to  which  Palmerston  made  no  preten- 
sion. In  writing  to  Lord  Normanby  about  the  debate,  Lord 
Palmerston  distributed  his  praise  to  friends  and  enemies  with 
that  generous  impartiality  which  was  a  fine  part  of  his  char- 
acter. Gladstone's  attack  on  his  policy  he  pronounced  "  a 
first-rate  performance."  Peel  and  Disraeli  he  praised  like- 
wise. But  "  as  to  Cockburn's,"  he  said, "  I  do  not  know  that 
I  ever  in  the  course  of  my  life  heard  a  better  speech  from 
anybody,  without  any  exception."  The  effect  which  Cock- 
burn's  speech  produced  on  the  House  was  well  described  in 
the  House  itself  by  one  who  rose  chiefly  for  the  purpose  of 
disputing  the  principles  it  advocated.  Mr.  Cobden  observed 
that  when  Mr.  Cockburn  had  concluded  his  speech,  "  one- 
half  of  the  Treasury  benches  were  left  empty,  while  honor- 
able members  ran  after  one  another,  tumbling  over  each 
other  in  their  haste  to  shake  hands  with  the  honorable  and 
learned  member."  Mr.  Cockburn's  career  was  safe  from 
that  hour.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  he  well  upheld  in 
after  years  the  reputation  he  won  in  a  night.  The  brilliant 
and  sudden  success  of  the  member  for  Southampton  was  but 
the  fitting  prelude  to  the  abiding  distinction  won  by  the 
Lord  Chief-justice  of  England. 

One  associatiofl^of  profound  melancholy  clings  to  that 
great  debate.  The  speech  delivered  by  Sir  Robert  Peel 
was  the  last  that  was  destined  to  come  from  his  lips.  The 
debate  closed  on  the  morning  of  Saturday,  June  29th.  It 
was  nearly  four  o'clock  when  the  division  was  taken,  and 
Peel  left  the  House  as  the  sunlight  was  already  beginning 
to  stream  into  the  corridors  and  lobbies.  He  went  home  to 
rest;  but  his  sleep  could  not  be  long.  He  had  to  attend  a 
meeting  of  the  Royal  Commissioners  of  the  Great  Industrial 
Exhibition  at  twelve,  and  the  meeting  was  important.  The 


332  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

site  of  the  building  had  to  be  decided  upon,  and  Prince  Al- 
bert and  the  Commissioners  generally  relied  greatly  on  the 
influence  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  sustain  them  against  the 
clamorous  objection  out-of-doors  to  the  choice  of  a  place  in 
Hyde  Park.  Peel  went  to  the  meeting,  and  undertook  to 
assume  the  leading  part  in  defending  the  decision  of  the 
Commissioners  before  the  House  of  Commons.  He  return- 
ed home  for  a  short  time  after  the  meeting,  and  then  set  out 
for  a  ride  in  the  Park.  He  called  at  Buckingham  Palace, 
and  wrote  his  name  in  the  Queen's  visiting-book.  Then,  as 
he  was  riding  up  Constitution  Hill,  he  stopped  to  talk  to  a 
young  lady,  a  friend  of  his,  who  was  also  riding.  His  horse 
suddenly  shied  and  flung  him  off;  and  Peel  clinging  to  the 
bridle,  the  animal  fell  with  its  knees  on  his  shoulders.  The 
injuries  which  he  received  proved  beyond  all  skill  of  sur- 
gery. He  lingered,  now  conscious,  now  delirious  with  pain, 
for  two  or  three  days ;  and  he  died  about  eleven  o'clock  on 
the  night  of  July  2d.  Most  of  the  members  of  his  family 
and  some  of  his  dearest  old  friends  and  companions  in  polit- 
ical arms  were  beside  him  when  he  died.  The  tears  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  in  one  House  of  Parliament,  and  the 
eloquence  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  other,  were  expressions  as 
fitting  and  adequate  as  might  be  of  the  universal  feeling  of 
the  nation. 

There  was  no  honor  which  Parliament  and  the  country 
would  not  willingly  have  paid  to  the  memory  of  Peel. 
Lord  John  Russell  proposed,  with  the  sanction  of  the 
Crown,  that  his  remains  should  be  buried  with  public  hon- 
ors. But  Peel  had  distinctly  declared  in  his  will  that  lie 
desired  his  remains  to  lie  beside  those  of  his  father  and 
mother  in  the  family  vault  at  Drayton  Bassett.  All  that 
Parliament  and  the  country  could  do,  therefore,  was  to  de- 
cree a  monument  to  him  in  Westminster  Abbey.  The  offer 
of  a  peerage  was  made  to  Lady  Peel,  but,  as  might  perhaps 
have  been  expected,  it  was  declined.  Lady  Peel  declared 
that  her  own  desire  was  to  bear  no  other  name  than  that  by 
which  her  husband  had  been  known.  She  also  explained 
that  the  express  wish  of  her  husband,  recorded  in  his  will, 
was  that  no  member  of  his  family  should  accept  any  title  or 
other  reward  on  account  of  any  services  Peel  might  have 
rendered  to  his  country.  No  desire  could  have  been  more 


DON  PACIFICO.  333 

honorable  to  the  statesman  who  had  formed  and  expressed 
it;  none  certainly  more  in  keeping  with  all  that  was  known 
of  the  severely  unselfish  and  unostentatious  character  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel.  Yet  there  were  persons  found  to  misconstrue 
his  meaning,  and  to  discover  offence  to  the  order  of  aristoc- 

O7 

racy  in  Peel's  determination.  A  report  went  about  that  the 
great  statesman's  objection  to  the  acceptance  of  a  peerage 
by  one  of  his  family  implied  a  disparagement  of  the  order 
of  peers,  and  was  founded  on  feelings  of  contempt  or  hostil- 
ity to  the  House  of  Lords.  Mr.  Goulburn,  who  was  one  of 
Peel's  executors,  easily  explained  Peel's  meaning,  if  indeed 
it  needed  explanation  to  any  reasonable  mind.  Peel  was 
impressed  with  the  conviction  that  it  was  better  for  a  man 
to  be  the  son  of  his  own  works ;  and  he  desired  that  his 
sons,  if  they  were  to  bear  titles  and  distinctions  given  them 
by  the  State,  should  win  them  by  their  own  services  and 
worth,  and  not  simply  put  them  on  as  an  inheritance  from 
their  father.  As  regards  himself,  it  may  well  be  that  he 
thought  the  name  under  which  he  had  made  his  reputation 
became  him  better  than  any  new  title.  He  had  not  looked 
for  reward  of  that  kind,  and  might  well  prefer  to  mark  the 
fact  that  he  did  not  specially  value  such  distinctions.  Nor 
would  it  be  any  disparagement  to  the  peerage — a  thing 
which  in  the  case  of  a  man  with  Peel's  opinions  is  utterly 
out  of  the  question — to  think  that  much  of  the  dignity  of  a 
title  depends  on  its  long  descent  and  its  historic  record,  and 
that  a  fire-new,  specially  invented  title  to  a  man  already 
great  is  a  disfigurement,  or  at  least  a  disguise,  rather  than 
an  adornment.  When  titles  were  abolished  during  the  great 
French  Revolution,  Mirabeau  complained  of  being  called 
"  Citizen  Riquetti "  in  the  official  reports  of  the  Assembly. 
"With  your  Riquetti,"  he  said,  angrily,  "  you  have  puzzled 
all  Europe  for  days."  Europe  knew  Count  Mirabeau,  but 
was  for  some  time  bewildered  by  Citizen  Riquetti.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  may  well  have  objected  to  a  reversal  of  the 
process,  and  to  the  bewildering  of  Europe  by  disguising  a 
famous  citizen  in  a  new  peerage. 

"Peel's  death,"  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to  his  brother  a 
few  days  after,  putting  the  remark  at  the  close  of  a  long 
letter  about  the  recent  victory  of  the  Government  and  the 
congratulations  he  had  personally  received,  "is  a  great  ca- 


334  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

lamity,  and  one  that  seems  to  have  had  no  adequate  cause. 
He  was  a  very  bad  and  awkward  rider,  and  his  horse  might 
have  been  sat  by  any  better  equestrian  ;  but  he  seems  some- 
how or  other  to  have  been  entangled  in  the  bridle,  and  to 
have  pulled  the  horse  to  step  or  kneel  upon  him.  The  in- 
jury to  the  shoulder  was  severe  but  curable;  that  which 
killed  him  was  a  broken  rib  forced  with  great  violence  in- 
ward into  the  lungs."  The  cause  of  Peel's  death  would 
certainly  not  have  been  adequate,  as  Lord  Palmerston  put 
it,  if  great  men  needed  prodigious  and  portentous  events 
to  bring  about  their  end.  But  the  stumble  of  a  horse  has 
been  found  enough  in  other  instances  too.  Peel  seemed  des- 
tined for  great  things  yet  when  he  died.  He  was  but  in  his 
sixty -third  year;  he  was  some  years  younger  than  Lord 
Palmerston,  who  may  be  said,  without  exaggeration,  to  have 
just  achieved  his  first  great  success.  Many  circumstances 
were  pointing  to  Peel  as  likely  before  long  to  be  summoned 
again  to  the  leadership  in  the  government  of  the  country. 
It  is  superfluous  to  say  that  his  faculties  as  Parliamentary 
orator  or  statesman  were  not  showing  any  signs  of  decay. 
An  English  public  man  is  not  supposed  to  show  signs  of 
decaying  faculties  at  sixty-two.  The  shying  horse,  and  per- 
haps the  bad  ridership,  settled  the  question  of  Peel's  career 
between  them.  We  have  already  endeavored  to  estimate 
that  career  and  to  do  justice  to  Peel's  great  qualities.  He 
was  not  a  man  of  original  genius,  but  he  was  one  of  the  best 
administrators  of  other  men's  ideas  that  ever  knew  how  and 
when  to  leave  a  party  and  to  serve  a  country.  He  was 
never  tried  by  the  severe  tests  which  tell  whether  a  man  is 
a  statesman  of  the  highest  order.  He  was  never  tried  as 
Cavour,  for  example,  was  tried,  by  conditions  which  placed 
the  national  existence  of  his  country  in  jeopardy.  He  had 
no  such  trials  to  encounter  as  ^yere  forced  on  Pitt.  He  was 
the  minister  of  a  country  always  peaceful,  safe,  and  prosper- 
ous. But  he  was  called  upon  at  a  trying  moment  to  take  a 
step  on  which  assuredly  much  of  the  prosperity  of  the  peo- 
ple and  nearly  all  the  hopes  of  his  party,  along  with  his 
own  personal  reputation,  were  imperilled.  He  did  not  want 
courage  to  take  the  step,  and  he  had  the  judgment  to  take 
it  at  the  right  time.  He  bore  the  reproaches  of  that  which 
had  been  his  party  with  dignity  and  composure.  He  was 


DON   PACIFICO.  335 

undoubtedly,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  calls  him,  a  great  mem- 
ber of  Parliament ;  but  he  was  surely  also  a  great  minister. 
Perhaps  he  only  needed  a  profounder  trial  at  the  hands  of 
fate  to  have  earned  the  title  of  a  great  man. 

To  the  same  year  belongs  the  close  of  another  remarkable 
career.  On  August  26th,  1850,  Louis  Philippe,  lately  King 
of  the  French,  died  at  Claremont,  the  guest  of  England. 
Few  men  in  history  had  gone  through  greater  reverses. 
Son  of  Philippe  Egalite,  brought  up  in  a  sort  of  blending  of 
luxury  and  scholastic  self-denial,  under  the  contrasting  in- 
fluence of  his  father,  and  of  his  teacher,  Madame  de  Gen- 
lis,  a  woman  full,  at  least,  of  virtuous  precept  and  Rousseau- 
like  profession,  he  showed  great  force  of  character  during 
the  Revolution.  He  still  regarded  France  as  his  country, 
though  she  no  longer  gave  a  throne  to  any  of  his  family. 
He  had  fought  like  a  brave  young  soldier  at  Valmy  and 
Jemappes.  "Egalite  Fils"  says  Carlyle,  speaking  of  the 
young  man  at  Valmy — "Equality  Junior,  a  light,  gallant 
field-officer,  distinguished  himself  by  intrepidity — it  is  the 
same  intrepid  individual  who  now,  as  Louis  Philippe,  with- 
out the  Equality,  struggles  under  sad  circumstances  to  be 
called  King  of  the  French  for  a  season."  It  is  he  who,  as 
Carlyle  also  describes  it,  saves  his  sister  with  such  spirit  and 
energy,  when  Madame  de  Genlis,  with  nil  her  fine  precepts, 
would  have  left  her  behind  to  whatever  danger.  "Behold 
the  young  Princely  Brother,  struggling  hitherward,  hastily 
calling;  bearing  the  Princess  in  his  arms.  Hastily  he  has 
clutched  the  poor  young  lady  up,  in  her  very  night-gown, 
nothing  saved  of  her  goods  except  the  watch  from  the  pil- 
low; with  brotherly  despair  he  flings  her  in,  among  the 
bandboxes,  into  Geulis's  chaise,  into  Genlis's  arms.  .  .  . 
The  brave  young  Egalite  has  a  most  wild  morrow  to  look 
for;  but  now  only  himself  to  carry  through  it."  The  brave 
young  Egalite  had,  indeed,  a  wild  time  before  him.  A  wan- 
derer, an  exile,  a  fugitive,  a  teacher  in  Swiss  and  American 
schools;  bearing  many  and  various  names  as  he  turned  to 
many  callings  and  saw  many  lands,  always,  perhaps,  keeping 
in  mind  that  Danton  had  laid  his  great  hand  upon  his  head 
and  declared  that  the  boy  must  one  day  be  King  of  France. 
Then  in  the  whirligig  of  time  the  opportunity  that  long 
might  have  seemed  impossible  came  round  at  last;  and  the 


336  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

soldier,  exile,  college  teacher,  wanderer  among  American 
Indian  tribes,  resident  of  Philadelphia,  and  of  Bloomingdale 
in  the  New  York  suburbs,  is  King  of  the  French.  Well  had 
Carlyle  gauged  his  position,  after  some  years  of  reign,  when 
he  described  him  "  as  struggling  under  sad  circumstances 
to  be  called  King  of  the  French  for  a  season."  He  ought 
to  have  been  a  great  man  ;  he  had  had  a  great  training. 
All  his  promise  as  a  man  faded  when  his  seeming  success 
began  to  shine.  He  had  apparently  learned  nothing  of  ad- 
versity; he  was  able  to  learn  nothing  of  prosperity  and 
greatness.  Of  all  men  whom  his  time  had  tried,  he  ought 
best  to  have  known,  one  might  think,  the  vanity  of  human 
schemes,  and  the  futility  of  trying  to  uphold  thrones  on 
false  principles.  He  intrigued  for  power  as  if  his  previous 
experience  had  taught  him  that  power  once  obtained  was 
inalienable.  He  seemed  at  one  time  to  have  no  real  faith  in 
anything  but  chicane.  He  made  the  fairest  professions,  and 
did  the  meanest,  falsest  things.  He  talked  to  Queen  Vic- 
toria in  language  that  might  have  brought  tears  into  a 
father's  eyes;  and  he  was  all  the  time  planning  the  detest- 
able juggle  of  the  Spanish  marriages.  He  did  not  even 
seem  to  retain  the  courage  of  his  youth.  It  went,  apparent- 
ly, with  whatever  of  true,  unselfish  principle  he  had  when 
he  was  yet  a  young  soldier  of  the  Republic.  He  was  like 
our  own  James  II.,  who  as  a  youth  extorted  the  praise  of 
the  great  Turenne  for  his  bravery,  and  as  a  king  earned  the 
scorn  of  the  world  for  his  pusillanimous  imbecility.  Some 
people  say  that  there  remained  a  gleam  of  perverted  princi- 
ple in  Louis  Philippe  which  broke  out  just  at  the  close,  and, 
unluckily  for  him,  exactly  at  the  wrong  time.  It  is  assert- 
ed that  he  could  have  put  down  the  movement  of  1848  in 
the  beginning  with  one  decisive  word.  Certainly  those 
who  began  that  movement  were  as  little  prepared  as  he  for 
its  turning  out  a  revolution.  It  is  generally  assumed  that 
he  halted  and  dallied  and  refused  to  give  the  word  of  com- 
mand out  of  sheer  weakness  of  mind  and  lack  of  courage. 
But  the  assumption,  according  to  some,  is  unjust.  Their 
theory  is  that  Louis  Philippe  at  that  moment  of  crisis  was 
seized  with  a  conscientious  scruple,  and  believed  that  having 
been  called  to  power  by  the  choice  of  the  people — called  to 
rule  not  as  King  of  France,  but  as  King  of  the  French — as 


DON   PACIFICO.  337 

King,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  French  people  so  long  as  they 
chose  to  have  him — he  was  not  authorized  to  maintain  him- 
self on  that  throne  by  force.  The  feeling  would  have  been 
just  and  right  if  it  were  certain  that  the  French  people,  or 
any  majority  of  the  French  people,  really  wished  him  away, 
and  were  prepared  to  welcome  a  republic.  But  it  was 
hardly  fair  to  those  who  set  him  on  the  throne  to  assume  at 
once  that  he  was  bound  to  come  down  from  it  at  the  bid- 
ding of  no  matter  whom,  how  few  or  how  many,  and  with- 
out in  some  way  trying  conclusions  to  see  if  it  were  the 
voice  of  France  that  summoned  him  to  descend,  or  only  the 
outcry  of  a  moment  and  a  crowd.  The  scruple,  if  it  existed, 
lost  the  throne  ;  in  which  we  are  far  from  saying  that  France 
suffered  any  great  loss.  We  are  bound  to  say  that  M. 
Thiers,  who  ought  to  have  known,  does  not  seem  to  have 
believed  in  the  operation  of  any  scruple  of  the  kind,  and 
ascribes  the  King's  fall  simply  to  blundering  and  to  bad 
advice.  But  it  would  have  been  curiously  illustrative  of 
the  odd  contradictions  of  human  nature,  and  especially 
curious  as  illustrating  that  one  very  odd  and  mixed  nature, 
if  Louis  Philippe  had  really  felt  such  a  scruple  and  yielded 
to  it.  He  had  carried  out  with  full  deliberation,  and  in 
spite  of  all  remonstrance,  schemes  which  tore  asunder  hu- 
man lives,  blighted  human  happiness,  played  at  dice  with 
the  destinies  of  whole  nations,  and  might  have  involved  all 
Europe  in  war,  and  it  does  not  seem  that  he  ever  felt  one 
twinge  of  scruple  or  acknowledged  one  pang  of  remorse. 
His  policy  had  been  unutterably  mean  and  selfish  and  de- 
ceitful. His  very  bourgeois  virtues,  on  which  he  was  so 
much  inclined  to  boast  himself,  had  been  a  sham ;  for  he 
had  carried  out  schemes  which  defied  and  flouted  the  first 
principles'  of  human  virtue,  and  made  as  light  of  the  honor 
of  woman  as  of  the  integrity  of  man.  It  would  humor  the 
irony  of  fate  if  he  had  sacrificed  his  crown  to  a  scruple 
which  a  man  of  really  high  principle  would  well  have  felt 
justified  in  banishing  from  his  mind.  One  is  reminded  of 
the  daughter  of  Macklin,  the  famous  actor,  who  having 
made  her  success  on  the  stage  by  appearing  constantly  in 
pieces  which  compelled  the  most  liberal  display  of  form  and 
limbs  to  all  the  house  and  all  the  town,  died  of  a  slight  in- 
jury to  her  knee,  which  she  allowed  to  grow  mortal  rather 
I.— 15 


338  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

than  permit  any  doctor  to  look  at  the  suffering  place.  In 
Louis  Philippe's  case,  too,  the  scruple  would  show  so  oddly 
that  even  the  sacrifice  it  entailed  could  scarcely  make  us 
regard  it  with  respect. 

He  died  in  exile  among  us,  the  clever,  unwise,  grand,  mean 
old  man.  There  was  a  great  deal  about  him  which  made 
him  respected,  in  private  life,  and  when  he  had  nothing  to 
do  with  state  intrigues  and  the  foreign  policy  of  courts. 
He  was  much  liked  in  England,  where  for  many  years  after 
his  sons  lived.  But  there  were  Englishmen  who  did  not 
like  him,  and  did  not  readily  forgive  him.  One  of  these  was 
Lord  Palmerston.  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to  his  brother  a 
few  days  after  the  death  of  Louis  Philippe,  expressing  his 
sentiments  thereupon  with  the  utmost  directness.  "The 
death  of  Louis  Philippe,"  he  said,  "delivers  me  from  my 
most  artful  and  inveterate  enemy,  whose  position  gave  him 
in  many  ways  the  power  to  injure  me."  Louis  Philippe  al- 
ways detested  Lord  Palmerston,  and,  according  to  Thiers, 
was  constantly  saying  witty  and  spiteful  things  of  the  Eng- 
lish minister,  which  good-natured  friends  as  constantly 
brought  to  Palmerston's  ears.  When  Lord  Palmerston  did 
not  feel  exactly  as  a  good  Christian  ought  to  have  felt,  he 
at  least  never  pretended  to  any  such  feeling.  The  same 
letter  contains  immediately  after  a  reference  to  Sir  Robert 
Peel.  It,  too,  is  characteristic.  "  Though  I  am  sorry  for 
the  death  of  Peel  from  personal  regard,  and  because  it  is  no 
doubt  a  great  loss  to  the  country,  yet,  so  far  as  my  own 
political  position  is  concerned,  I  do  not  think  that  lie  was 
ever  disposed  to  do  me  any  good  turn."  A  little  while  be- 
fore, Prince  Albert,  writing  to  his  friend  Baron  Stockmar, 
had  spoken  of  Peel  as  having  somewhat  unduly  favored 
Palmerston's  foreign  policy  in  the  great  Pacifico  debate,  or 
at  least  not  having  borne  as  severely  as  he  might  upon  it, 
and  for  a  certainly  not  selfish  reason.  "  He  "  (Peel)  "  could 
not  call  the  policy  good,  and  yet  he  did  not  wish  to  damage 
the  ministry,  and  this  solely  because  he  considered  that  a 
Protectionist  Ministry  succeeding  them  would  be  dangerous 
to  the  country,  and  had  quite  determined  not  to  take  office 
himself.  But  would  the  fact  that  his  health  no  longer  ad- 
mitted of  his  doing  so  have  been  sufficient,  as  time  went  on, 
to  make  his  followers  and  friends  bear  with  patient  resigna- 


THE  ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  339 

tion  their  own  permanent  exclusion  from  office  ?  I  doubt 
it."  The  Prince  might  well  doubt  it:  if  Peel  had  lived,  it  is 
all  but  certain  that  he  would  have  had  to  take  office.  It  is 
curious,  however,  to  notice  how  completely  Prince  Albert 
and  Lord  Palmerston  are  at  odds  in  their  way  of  estimating 
Peel's  political  attitude  before  his  death.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  quiet  way  of  setting  Peel  down  as  one  who  would 
never  be  disposed  to  do  him  a  good  turn  is  characteristic 
of  the  manner  in  which  the  Foreign  Secretary  went  in  for 
the  game  of  politics.  Palmerston  was  a  man  of  kindly 
instincts  and  genial  temperament.  He  was  much  loved  by 
his  friends.  His  feelings  were  always  directing  him  toward 
a  certain  half-indolent  benevolence.  But  the  game  of  poli- 
tics was  to  him  like  the  hunting-field.  One  cannot  stop  to 
help  a  friend  out  of  a  ditch,  or  to  lament  over  him  if  he  is 
down  and  seriously  injured :  for  the  hour  the  only  thing  is 
to  keep  on  one's  way.  In  the  political  game  Lord  Palmer- 
ston was  playing,  enemies  were  only  obstacles,  and  it  would 
be  absurd  to  pretend  to  be  sorry  when  they  were  out  of  his 
path :  therefore  there  is  no  affectation  of  generous  regret 
for  Louis  Philippe.  Political  rivals,  even  if  private  friends, 
are  something  like  obstacles  too.  Palmerston  is  of  opinion 
that  Peel  would  never  be  disposed  to  do  him  a  good  turn, 
and  therefore  indulges  in  no  sentimental  regret  for  his  death. 
He  is  a  loss  to  the  country,  no  doubt,  and  personally  one 
is  sorry  for  him,  of  course,  and  all  that :  "  which  done,  God 
take  King  Edward  to  his  mercy,  and  leave  the  world  for 
me  to  bustle  in."  The  world  certainly  was  more  free  hence- 
forth for  Lord  Palmerston's  active  and  unresting  spirit  to 
bustle  in. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE    ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES   BILL. 

THE  autumn  of  1850  and  the  greater  part  of  1851  were 
disturbed  by  an  agitation  which  seems  strangely  out  of 
keeping  with  our  present  condition  of  religious  liberty  and 
civilization.  A  struggle  with  the  Papal  Court  might  ap- 
pear to  be  a  practical  impossibility  for  the  England  of  our 
time.  The  mind  has  to  go  back  some  centuries  to  put  it- 


340  A  HISTORY  OF  OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

self  into  what  would  appear  the  proper  framework  for  such 
events.  Legislation  or  even  agitation  against  Papal  aggres- 
sion would  seem  about  as  superfluous  in  our  modern  Eng- 
lish days,  as  the  use  of  any  of  the  once -popular  charms 
which  were  believed  to  hinder  witches  of  their  will.  The 
story  is  extraordinary,  and  is  in  many  ways  instructive. 

For  some  time  previous  to  1850  there  had  been,  as  we 
have  seen  already,  a  certain  movement  among  some  schol- 
arly, mystical  men  in  England  toward  the  Roman  Church. 
We  have  already  shown  how  this  movement  began,  and 
how  little  it  could  fairly  be  said  to  represent  any  actual  im- 
pulse of  reaction  among  the  English  people.  But  it  unques- 
tionably made  a  profound  impression  in  Rome.  The  court 
of  Rome  then  saw  everything  through  the  eyes  of  ecclesias- 
tics ;  and  a  Roman  Catholic  ecclesiastic  not  well  acquainted 
with  the  actual  conditions  of  English  life  might  well  be  ex- 
cused if,  when  he  found  that  two  or  three  great  Englishmen 
had  gone  over  to  the  Church,  he  fancied  that  they  were  but 
the  vanguard  of  a  vast  popular  or  national  movement.  It 
is  clear  that  the  court  of  Rome  was  quite  mistaken  as  to 
the  religious  condition  of  England.  The  most  chimerical 
notions  prevailed  in  the  Vatican.  To  the  eyes  of  Papal  en- 
thusiasm the  whole  English  nation  was  only  waiting  for 
some  word  in  season  to  return  to  the  spiritual  jurisdiction 
of  Rome.  The  Pope  had  not  been  fortunate  in  many  things. 
He  had  been  a  fugitive  from  his  own  city,  and  had  been  re- 
stored only  by  the  force  of  French  arms.  He  was  a  thor- 
oughly good,  pious,  and  genial  man,  not  seeing  far  into  the 
various  ways  of  human  thought  and  national  character ; 
and  to  his  mind  there  was  nothing  unreasonable  in  the  idea 
that  Heaven  might  have  made  up  for  the  domestic  disasters 
of  his  reign  by  making  him  the  instrument  of  the  conver- 
sion of  England.  No  better  proof  can  be  given  of  the  man- 
ner in  which  he  and  his  advisers  misunderstood  the  English 
people  than  the  step  with  which  his  sanguine  zeal  inspired 
him.  The  English  people,  even  while  they  yet  bowed  to 
the  spiritual  supremacy  of  the  Papacy,  were  always  keenly 
jealous  of  any  ecclesiastical  attempt  to  control  the  political 
action  or  restrict  the  national  independence  of  England. 
The  history  of  the  relations  between  England  and  Rome, 
for  long  generations  before  England  had  any  thought  of  re- 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  841 

nouncing  the  faith  of  Rome,  might  have  furnished  ample 
proof  of  this  to  any  one  who  gave  himself  the  trouble  to 
turn  over  a  few  pages  of  English  chronicles.  The  Pope  did 
not  read  English,  and  his  advisers  did  not  understand  Eng- 
land. Accordingly,  he  took  a  step,  with  the  view  of  encour- 
aging and  inviting  England  to  become  converted,  which 
was  calculated  specially  and  instantly  to  defeat  its  own  pur- 
pose. Had  the  great  majority  of  the  English  people  been 
really  drawing  toward  the  verge  of  a  reaction  to  Rome, 
such  an  act  as  that  done  by  the  Pope  might  have  startled 
them  back  to  their  old  attitude.  The  assumption  of  Papal 
authority  over  England  only  filled  the  English  people  with 
a  new  determination  to  repudiate  and  resist  every  preten- 
sion at  spiritual  authority  on  the  part  of  the  court  of  Rome. 
The  time  has  so  completely  passed  away,  and  the  sup- 
posed pretensions  have  come  to  so  little,  that  the  most  zeal- 
ous Protestant  can  afford  to  discuss  the  whole  question  now 
with  absolute  impartiality  and  unruffled  calmness.  Every 
one  can  clearly  see  now  that  if  the  Pope  was  mistaken  in 
the  course  he  took,  and  if  the  nation  in  general  was  amply 
justified  in  resenting  even  a  supposed  attempt  at  foreign 
interference,  the  piece  of  legislation  to  which  the  occasion 
gave  birth  was  riot  a  masterpiece  of  statesmanship,  nor  was 
the  manner  in  which  it  was  carried  through  always  credita- 
ble to  the  good-sense  of  Parliament  and  the  public.  The 
Papal  aggression  in  itself  was  perhaps  a  measure  to  smile  at 
rather  than  to  arouse  great  national  indignation.  It  con- 

O  O 

sisted  in  the  issue  of  a  Papal  bull,  "given  at  St. Peter's, 
Rome,  under  the  seal  of  the  fisherman,"  and  directing  the 
establishment  in  England  "of  a  hierarchy  of  bishops  deriv- 
ing their  titles  from  their  own  sees,  which  we  constitute  by 
the  present  letter  in  the  various  apostolic  districts."  It  is  a 
curious  evidence  of  the  little  knowledge  of  England's  con- 
dition possessed  by  the  court  of  Rome  then,  that  although 
five-sixths  at  least  of  the  Catholics  in  England  were  Irish  by 
birth  or  extraction,  the  newly -appointed  bishops  were  all, 
or  nearly  all,  Englishmen  unconnected  with  Ireland. 

An  Englishman  of  the  present  day  would  be  probably  in- 
clined to  ask,  on  hearing  the  effect  of  the  bull,  Is  that  all  ? 
Being  told  that  that  was  all,  he  would  probably  have  gone 
on  to  ask,  What  does  it  matter?  Who  cares  whether  the 


342  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Pope  gives  new  titles  to  his  English  ecclesiastics  or  not  ? 
What  Protestant  is  even  interested  in  knowing  whether  a 
certain  Catholic  bishop  living  in  England  is  called  Bishop 
of  Mesopotamia,  or  of  Lambeth?  There  always  were  Cath- 
olic bishops  in  England.  There  were  Catholic  archbishops. 
They  were  free  to  go  and  come,  to  preach  and  teach  as  they 
liked ;  to  dress  as  they  liked ;  for  all  that  nineteen  out  of 
every  twenty  Englishmen  cared,  they  might  have  been  also 
free  to  call  themselves  what  they  liked.  Any  Protestant 
who  mixed  with  Roman  Catholics,  or  knew  anything  about 
their  usages,  knew  that  they  were  in  the  habit  of  calling 
their  bishops  "  rny  lord,"  and  their  archbishops  "your  grace." 
He  knew,  of  course,  that  they  had  not  the  slightest  legal 
right  to  use  such  high-sounding  titles,  but  this  did  not  trou- 
ble him  in  the  least.  It  was  only  a  ceremonial  intended  for 
Catholics,  and  it  did  not  give  him  either  offence  or  concern. 
Why  then  should  he  be  expected  to  disturb  his  mind  be- 
cause the  Pope  chose  to  direct  that  the  English  Roman 
Catholics  should  call  a  man  Bishop  of  Liverpool  or  Arch- 
bishop of  Westminster  ?  The  Pope  could  not  compel  him 
to  call  them  by  any  such  names  if  he  did  not  think  fit ;  and 
unless  his  attention  had  been  very  earnestly  drawn  to  the 
fact,  he  never,  probably,  would  have  found  out  that  any 
new  titles  had  been  invented  for  the  Catholic  hierarchy  in 
England. 

This  was  the  way  in  which  a  great  many  Englishmen  re- 
garded the  matter  even  then.  But  it  must  be  owned  that 
there  was  something  about  the  time  and  manner  of  the 
Papal  bull  calculated  to  offend  the  susceptibility  of  a  great 
and  independent  nation.  The  mere  fact  that  a  certain  move- 
ment toward  Rome  had  been  painfully  visible  in  the  ranks 
of  the  English  Church  itself,  was  enough  to  make  people  sen- 
sitive and  jealous.  The  plain  sense  of  many  thoroughly  im- 
partial and  cool-headed  Englishmen  showed  them  that  the 
two  things  were  connected  in  the  mind  of  the  Pope,  and  that 
he  had  issued  his  bull  because  he  thought  the  time  was  act- 
ually coming  when  he  might  begin  to  take  measures  for  the 
spiritual  annexation  of  England.  His  pretensions  might  be 
of  no  account  in  themselves  ;  but  the  fact  that  he  made  them 
in  the  evident  belief  that  they  were  justified  by  realities, 
produced  a  jarring  and  painful  effect  on  the  mind  of  Eng- 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  343 

land.  The  offence  lay  in  the  Pope's  evident  assumption  that 
the  change  he  was  making  was  the  natural  result  of  an  act- 
ual change  in  the  national  feeling  of  England.  The  anger 
was  not  against  the  giving  of  the  new  titles,  but  against 
the  assumption  of  a  new  right  to  give  titles  representing 
territorial  distinctions  in  this  country.  The  agitation  that 
sprang  up  was  fiercely  heated  by  the  pastoral  letter  of  the 
chief  of  the  new  hierarchy.  The  Pope  had  divided  England 
into  various  dioceses,  which  he  placed  under  the  control  of 
an  archbishop  and  twelve  suffragans ;  and  the  new  archbish- 
op was  Cardinal  Wiseman.  Under  the  title  of  Archbishop 
of  Westminster  and  Administrator  Apostolic  of  the  Diocese 
of  Southwark,  Cardinal  Wiseman  was  now  to  reside  in  Lon- 
don. Cardinal  Wiseman  was  already  well  known  in  Eng- 
land. He  was  of  English  descent  on  his  father's  side,  and 
of  Irish  on  his  mother's;  he  was  a  Spaniard  by  birth,  and  a 
Roman  by  education.  His  family  on  both  sides  was  of  good 
position ;  his  father  came  of  a  long  line  of  Essex  gentry. 
Wiseman  had  held  the  professorship  of  Oriental  languages 
in  the  English  College  at  Rome,  and  afterward  became  rec- 
tor of  the  college.  In  1840  he  was  appointed  by  the  Pope 
one  of  the  Vicars  Apostolic  in  England,  and  held  his  posi- 
tion here  as  Bishop  of  Melipotamus  in  partibus  infidelium. 
He  was  well  known  to  be  a  fine  scholar,  an  accomplished 
linguist,  and  a  powerful  preacher  and  controversialist.  But 
he  was  believed  also  to  be  a  man  of  great  ecclesiastical  am- 
bition— ambition  for  his  Church,  that  is  to  say — of  singular 
boldness,  and  of  much  political  ability.  The  Pope's  action 
was  set  down  as  in  great  measure  the  work  of  Wiseman. 
The  Cardinal  himself  was  accepted  in  the  minds  of  most 
Englishmen  as  a  type  of  the  regular  Italian  ecclesiastic — 
bold,  clever,  ambitious,  and  unscrupulous.  The  very  fact  of 
his  English  extraction  only  militated  the  more  against  him 
in  the  public  feeling.  He  was  regarded  as  in  some  sense 
one  who  had  gone  over  to  the  enemy,  and  who  was  the  more 
to  be  dreaded  because  of  the  knowledge  he  carried  with 
him.  Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  in  the  existing 
mood  of  the  English  people  the  very  title  of  Cardinal  exas- 
perated the  feeling  against  Wiseman.  Had  he  come  as  a 
simple  archbishop,  the  aggression  might  not  have  seemed 
so  marked.  The  title  of  Cardinal  brought  back  unwelcome 


344  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

memories  to  the  English  public.  It  reminded  them  of  a  pe- 
riod of  their  history  when  the  forces  of  Rome  and  those  of 
the  national  independence  were  really  arrayed  against  each 
other  in  a  struggle  which  Englishmen  might  justly  look  on 
as  dangerous.  Since  those  times  there  had  been  no  cardinal 
in  England.  Did  it  not  look  ominous  that  a  cardinal  should 
present  himself  now?  The  first  step  taken  by  Cardinal 
Wiseman  did  not  tend  to  charm  away  this  feeling.  He  is- 
sued a  pastoral  letter,  addressed  to  England,  on  October  7th, 
1850,  which  was  set  forth  as  "given  out  of  the  Flaminian 
Gate  of  Rome."  This  description  of  the  letter  was  after- 
ward stated  to  be  in  accordance  with  one  of  the  necessary 
formularies  of  the  Church  of  Rome;  but  it  was  then  as- 
sumed in  England  to  be  an  expression  of  insolence  and  au- 
dacity intended  to  remind  the  English  people  that  from  out 
of  Rome  itself  came  the  assertion  of  supremacy  over  them. 
This  letter  was  to  be  read  publicly  in  all  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic churches  in  London.  It  addressed  itself  directly  to  the 
English  people,  and  it  announced  that  "your  beloved  coun- 
try has  received  a  place  among  the  fair  churches  which,  nor- 
mally constituted,  form  the  splendid  aggregate  of  Catholic 
communion  ;  Catholic  England  has  been  restored  to  its  orbit 
in  the  ecclesiastical  firmament  from  which  its  light  had  long 
vanished ;  and  begins  now  anew  its  course  of  regularly-ad- 
justed action  round  the  centre  of  unity,  the  source  of  juris- 
diction, of  light,  and  of  vigor." 

It  must  be  allowed  that  this  was  rather  imprudent  lan- 
guage to  address  to  a  people  peculiarly  proud  of  being  Prot- 
estant ;  a  people  of  whom  their  critics  say,  not  wholly  with- 
out reason,  that  they  are  somewhat  narrow  and  unsympa- 
thetic in  their  Protestantism;  that  their  national  tendency 
is  to  believe  in  the  existence  of  nothing  really  good  out- 
side the  limits  of  Protestantism.  In  England  the  National 
Church  is  a  symbol  of  victory  over  foreign  enemies  and 
domination  at  home.  It  was  not  likely  that  the  English 
people  could  regard  it  as  anything  but  an  offence  to  be  told 
that  they  were  resuming  their  place  as  a  part  of  an  ecclesi- 
astical system  to  which  they,  of  all  peoples,  looked  with  dis- 
like and  distrust.  We  are  not  saying  that  the  feeling  with 
which  the  great  bulk  of  the  English  people  regarded  Cardi- 
nal Wiseman's  Church  was  just  or  liberal.  We  are  simply 

0 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL   TITLES   BILL.  345 

recording  the  unquestionable  historical  fact  that  such  was 
the  manner  in  which  the  English  people  regarded  the  Roman 
Church,  in  order  to  show  how  slender  was  the  probability 
of  their  being  moved  to  anything  but  anger  by  such  expres- 
sions as  those  contained  in  Cardinal  Wiseman's  letter.  But 
the  letter  had  hardly  reached  England  when  the  country 
was  aroused  by  another  letter  coming  from  a  very  different 
quarter,  and  intended  as  a  counterblast  to  the  Papal  assump- 
tion of  authority.  This  was  Lord  John  Russell's  famous 
Durham  letter.  Russell  had  the  art  of  writing  letters  that 
exploded  like  bomb-shells  in  the  midst  of  some  controversy. 
His  Edinburgh  letter  had  set  the  cabinet  of  Sir  Robert  Peel 
on  to  recognize  the  fact  that  something  must  be  done  with 
the  Free-trade  question;  and  now  his  Durham  letter  spoke 
the  word  that  let  loose  a  very  torrent  of  English  public  feel- 
ing. The  letter  was  in  reply  to  one  from  the  Bishop  of 
Durham,  and  was  dated  "Downing  Street,  November  the 
4th."  Lord  John  Russell  condemned  in  the  most  unmeas- 
ured terms  the  assumption  of  the  Pope  as  "a  pretension  of 
supremacy  over  the  realm  of  England,  and  a  claim  to  sole 
and  undivided  sway,  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  Queen's 
supremacy,  with  the  rights  of  our  bishops  and  clergy,  and 
with  'the  spiritual  independence  of  the  nation  as  asserted 
even  in  the  Roman  Catholic  times."  Lord  John  Russell 
went  on  to  say  that  his  alarm  was  by  no  means  equal  to  his 
indignation ;  that  the  liberty  of  Protestantism  had  been 
enjoyed  too  long  in  England  to  allow  of  any  successful 
attempt  to  impose  a  foreign  yoke  npon  men's  minds  and 
consciences,  and  that  the  laws  of  the  country  should  be  care- 
fully examined,  and  the  propriety  of  adopting  some  addi- 
tional measures  deliberately  considered.  But  Lord  John 
Russell  went  farther  than  all  this.  He  declared  that  there 
was  a  danger  that  alarmed  him  more  than  any  aggression 
from  a  foreign  sovereign,  and  that  was  "the  danger  within 
the  gates  from  the  unworthy  sons  of  the  Church  of  England 
herself."  Clergymen  of  that  Church,  he  declared,  had  been 
"  leading  their  flocks  step  by  step  to  the  verge  of  the  preci- 
pice." What,  he  asked,  meant  "  the  honor  paid  to  saints, 
the  claim  of  infallibility  for  the  Church,  the  superstitious 
use  of  the  sign  of  the  Cross,  the  muttering  of  the  Liturgy  so 
as  to  disguise  the  language  in  which  it  is  written,  the  recom- 

15* 


346  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

mendation  of  auricular  confession,  and  the  administration  of 
penance  and  absolution?"  The  letter  closed  with  a  sentence 
which  gave  especial  offence  to  Roman  Catholics,  but  which 
Lord  John  Russell  afterward  explained,  and  indeed  the  con- 
text ought  to  have  shown,  was  not  meant  as  any  attack  on 
their  religion  or  their  ceremonial:  "I  have  little  hope  that 
the  propounders  and  framers  of  these  innovations  will  desist 
from  their  insidious  course;  but  I  rely  with  confidence  on 
the  people  of  England;  and  I  will  not  bate  one  jot  of  heart 
or  hope  so  long  as  the  glorious  principles  and  the  immortal 
martyrs  of  the  Reformation  shall  be  held  in  reverence  by 
the  great  mass  of  a  nation  which  looks  with  contempt  on 
the  mummeries  of  superstition,  and  with  scorn  at  the  labori- 
ous endeavors  which  are  now  making  to  confine  the  intellect 
and  enslave  the  soul."  It  is  now  clear,  from  the  very  terms 
of  this  letter,  that  Lord  John  Russell  meant  to  apply  these 
words  to  the  practices  within  the  English  Church  which  he 
had  so  strongly  condemned  in  the  earlier  passages,  and  which 
alone,  he  said,  he  regarded  with  any  serious  alarm.  But  the 
Roman  Catholics  in  general,  and  the  majority  of  persons  of 
all  sects,  accepted  them  as  a  denunciation  of  "Popery." 
The  Catholics  looked  upon  them  as  a  declaration  of  war 
against  Catholicism ;  the  fanatical  of  the  other  side  wel- 
comed them  as  a  trumpet-call  to  a  new  "No  Popery" 
agitation. 

The  very  day  after  the  letter  appeared  was  the  Guy  Faux 
anniversary.  All  over  the  country  the  effigies  of  the  Pope 
and  Cardinal  Wiseman  took  the  place  of  the  regulation 
"  Guy,"  and  were  paraded  and  burnt  amidst  tumultuous 
demonstrations.  A  colossal  procession  of  "Guys"  passed 
down  Fleet  Street,  the  principal  figure  of  which,  a  gigantic 
form  of  sixteen  feet  high,  seated  in  a  .chariot,  had  to  be  bent 
down,  compelled  to  "  veil  his  crest,"  in  order  to  pass  under 
Temple  Bar.  This  Titanic  "  Guy  "  was  the  new  Cardinal  in 
his  red  robes.  In  Exeter  a  yet  more  elaborate  Anti-Papal 
demonstration  was  made.  A  procession  of  two  hundred  per- 
sons in  character-dresses  marched  round  the  venerable  cathe- 
dral amidst  the  varied  effulgence  of  colored  lights.  The  pro- 
cession represented  the  Pope,  the  new  Cardinal,  and  the  In- 
quisition, various  of  the  Inquisitors  brandishing  instruments 
of  torture.  Considerable  sums  of  money  were  spent  on  these 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  347 

popular  demonstrations,  the  only  interest  in  which  now  is 
that  they  serve  to  illustrate  the  public  sentiment  of  the 
hour.  Mr.  Disraeli  good-naturedly  endeavored  at  once  to 
foment  the  prevailing  heat  of  public  temper,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  direct  its  fervor  against  the  ministry  themselves,  by 
declaring  in  a  published  letter  that  he  could  hardly  blame 
the  Pope  for  supposing  himself  at  liberty  to  divide  England 
into  bishoprics,  seeing  the  encouragement  he  had  got  from 
the  ministers  themselves  by  the  recognition  they  had  offered 
to  the  Roman  Catholic  hierarchy  of  Ireland.  "The  fact  is," 
Mr.  Disraeli  said,  "  the  whole  question  has  been  surrendered 
and  decided  in  favor  of  the  Pope  by  the  present  Govern- 
ment. The  ministers  who  recognized  the  pseudo-Archbish- 
op of  Tuam  as  a  peer  and  a  prelate  cannot  object  to  the 
appointment  of  a  pseudo-  Archbishop  of  Westminster,  even 
though  he  be  a  cardinal."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  not 
the  existing  Government  that  had  recognized  the  rank  of 
the  Irish  Catholic  prelates.  The  recognition  had  been  for- 
mally arranged  in  January,  1845,  by  a  royal  warrant  or  com- 
mission for  carrying  out  the  Charitable  Bequests  Act,  which 
gave  the  Irish  Catholic  prelates  rank  immediately  after  the 
prelates  of  the  Established  Church  of  the  same  degree.  But 
the  letter  of  Mr.  Disraeli,  like  that  of  Lord  John  Russell, 
served  to  inflame  passions  on  both  sides,  and  to  put  the  coun- 
try in  the  worst  possible  mood  for  any  manner  of  wholesome 
legislation.  Never  during  the  same  generation  had  there 
been  such  an  outburst  of  anger  on  both  sides  of  the  religious 
controversy.  It  was  a  curious  incident  in  political  history 
that  Lord  John  Russell,  who  had,  more  than  any  Englishman 
then  living,  been  identified  with  the  principles  of  religious 
liberty,  who  had  sat  at  the  feet  of  Fox,  and  had  for  his 
closest  friend  the  Catholic  poet,  Thomas  Moore,  came  to  be 
regarded  by  Roman  Catholics  as  the  bitterest  enemy  of 
their  creed  and  their  rights  of  worship. 

The  ministry  felt  that  something  must  be  done.  They 
could  not  face  Parliament  without  some  piece  of  legislation 
to  satisfy  public  feeling.  Many,  even  among  the  most  zeal- 
ous Protestants,  deeply  regretted  that  Lord  John  Russell 
had  written  anything  on  the  subject.  Not  a  few  Roman 
Catholics  of  position  and  influence  bitterly  lamented  the  in- 
discretion of  the  Papal  court.  The  mischief,  however,  was 


348  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

now  fairly  afoot.  The  step  taken  by  the  Pope  had  set  the 
country  aflame.  Every  day  crowded  and  tumultuous  meet- 
ings were  held  to  denounce  the  action  of  the  court  of  Rome. 
Before  the  end  of  the  year  something  like  seven  thousand 
such  meetings  had  been  held  throughout  the  kingdom. 
Sometimes  the  Roman  Catholic  party  mustered  strong  at 
such  demonstrations,  and  the  result  was  rioting  and  dis- 
turbance. Addresses  poured  in  upon  the  Queen  and  the 
ministers  calling  for  decided  action  against  the  assumption 
of  Papal  authority.  About  the  same  time  Father  Gavazzi, 
an  Italian  republican  who  had  been  a  priest,  came  to  Lon- 
don and  began  a  series  of  lectures  against  the  Papacy.  He 
was  a  man  of... great  rhetorical  power,  with  a  remarkable 
command  of  the  eloquence  of  passion  and  denunciation. 
His  lectures  were  at  first  given  only  in  Italian,  and  there- 
fore did  not  appeal  to  a  popular  English  audience.  But 
they  were  reported  in  the  papers  at  much  length,  and  they 
contributed  not  a  little  to  swell  the  tide  of  public  feeling 
against  the  Pope  and  the  court  of  Rome.  The  new  Lord 
Chancellor,  Lord  Truro,  created  great  applause  and  tumult 
at  the  Lord  Mayor's  dinner  by  quoting  from  Shakspeare  the 
words,  "Under  my  feet  I'll  stamp  thy  cardinal's  hat,  in  spite 
of  Pope  or  dignities  of  Church."  Charles  Kean,  the  trage- 
dian, was  interrupted  by  thundering  peals  of  applause  and 
the  rising  of  the  whole  audience  to  their  feet  when,  as  King 
John,  he  proclaimed  that  "  no  Italian  priest  shall  tithe  or 
toll  in  our  dominion."  Long  afterward,  and  when  the  storm 
seemed  to  have  wholly  died  away,  Cardinal  Wiseman,  going 
in  a  carriage  through  the  streets  of  Liverpool  to  deliver  a 
lecture  on  a  purely  literary  subject  to  a  general  audience, 
was  pelted  with  stones  by  a  mob  who  remembered  the  Pa- 
pal assumption  and  the  passions  excited  by  the  Ecclesias- 
tical Titles  Act. 

The  opening  of  Parliament  came.  The  ministry  had  to 
do  something.  No  ministry  that  ever  held  power  in  Eng- 
land could  have  attempted  to  meet  the  House  of  Commons 
without  some  project  of  a  measure  to  allay  public  excite- 
ment. On  February  4th,  1851,  the  Queen  in  person  opened 
Parliament.  Her  speech  contained  some  sentences  which 
were  listened  to  with  the  profoundest  interest  because  they 
referred  to  the  question  which  was  agitating  all  England. 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL   TITLES  BILL.  349 

"  The  recent  assumption  of  certain  ecclesiastical  titles  con- 
ferred by  a  foreign  Power  has  excited  strong  feelings  in 
this  country  ;  and  large  bodies  of  my  subjects  have  present- 
ed addresses  to  me  expressing  attachment  to  the  Throne, 
and  praying  that  such  assumptions  should  be  resisted.  I 
have  assured  them  of  my  resolution  to  maintain  the  rights 
of  my  crown  and  the  independence  of  the  nation  against  all 
encroachments,  from  whatever  quarter  they  may  proceed. 
I  have  at  the  same  time  expressed  my  earnest  desire  and 
firm  determination,  under  God's  blessing,  to  maintain  unim- 
paired the  religious  liberty  which  is  so  justly  prized  by  the 
people  of  this  country."  How  little  of  inclination  to  any 
measures  dealing  unfairly  with  Roman  Catholics  was  in 
the  mind  of  the  Queen  herself  may  be  seen  from  a  letter  in 
which,  when  the  excitement  was  at  its  height,  she  had  ex- 
pressed her  opinion  to  her  aunt,  the  Duchess  of  Gloucester. 
"I  would  never  have  consented  to  anything  which  breathed 
a  spirit  of  intolerance.  Sincerely  Protestant  as  I  always 
have  been  and  always  shall  be,  and  indignant  as  I  am  at 
those  who  call  themselves  Protestants  while  they  are,  in 
fact,  quite  the  contrary,  I  much  regret  the  unchristian  and 
intolerant  spirit  exhibited  by  many  people  at  the  public 
meetings.  I  cannot  bear  to  hear  the  violent  abuse  of  the 
Catholic  religion,  which  is  so  painful  and  so  cruel  toward 
the  many  good  and  innocent  Roman  Catholics.  However, 
we  must  hope  and  trust  this  excitement  will  soon  cease, 
and  that  the  wholesome  effect  of  it  upon  our  own  Church 
will  be  lasting." 

"The  Papal  aggression  question,"  Lord  Palmerston  wrote 
to  his  brother  just  before  the  opening  of  Parliament, "  will 
give  us  some  trouble,  and  give  rise  to  stormy  debates.  Our 
difficulty  will  be  to  find  out  a  measure  which  shall  satisfy 
reasonable  Protestants  without  violating  those  principles 
of  liberal  toleration  which  we  are  pledged  to.  I  think  we 
shall  succeed.  .  .  .  The  thing  itself,  in  truth,  is  little  or  noth- 
ing, and  does  not  justify  the  irritation.  What  has  goaded 
the  nation  is  the  manner,  insolent  and  ostentatious,  in  which 
it  has  been  done.  .  .  .  We  must  bring  in  a  measure.  The 
country  would  not  be  satisfied  without  some  legislative  en- 
actment. We  shall  make  it  as  gentle  as  possible.  The  vio- 
lent party  will  object  to  it  for  its  mildness,  and  will  endeavor 


350  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

to  drive  us  farther."  A  measure  brought  in  only  because 
something  must  be  done  to  satisfy  public  opinion  is  not  like- 
ly to  be  a  very  valuable  piece  of  legislation.  The  ministry 
in  this  case  were  embarrassed  by  the  fact  that  they  really 
did  not  particularly  want  to  do  anything  except  to  satisfy 
public  opinion  for  the  moment,  and  get  rid  of  all  the  contro- 
versy. They  were  placed  between  two  galling  fires.  On 
the  one  side  were  the  extreme  Protestants,  to  whom  Palm- 
erston  alluded  as  violent,  and  who  were  eager  for  severe 
measures  against  the  Catholics ;  and  on  the  other  were  the 
Roman  Catholic  supporters  of  the  ministry,  who  protested 
against  any  legislation  whatever  on  the  subject.  It  would 
have  been  simply  impossible  to  find  any  safe  and  satisfactory 
path  of  compromise  which  all  could  consent  to  walk.  The 
ministry  did  the  best  they  could  to  frame  a  measure  which 
should  seem  to  do  something  and  yet  do  little  or  nothing. 
Two  or  three  days  after  the  meeting  of  Parliament,  Lord 
John  Russell  introduced  his  bill  to  prevent  the  assumption 
by  Roman  Catholics  of  titles  taken  from  any  territory  or 
place  within  the  United  Kingdom.  The  measure  proposed 
to  prohibit  the  use  of  all  such  titles  under  penalty,  and  to 
render  void  all  acts  done  by  or  bequests  made  to  persons 
under  such  titles.  The  Roman  Catholic  Relief  Act  imposed 
a  penalty  of  one  hundred  pounds  for  every  assumption  of  a 
title  taken  from  an  existing  see.  Lord  John  Russell  pro- 
posed now  to  extend  the  penalty  to  the  assumption  of  any 
title  whatever  from  any  place  in  the  United  Kingdom.  The 
reception  which  was  given  to  Lord  John  Russell's  motion 
for  leave  to  bring  in  this  bill  was  not  encouraging.  Usually 
leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  is  granted  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Some  few  general  observations  of  extemporaneous  and 
guarded  criticism  are  often  made ;  but  the  common  practice 
is  to  offer  no  opposition.  On  this  occasion,  however,  it  was 
at  once  made  manifest  that  no  measure,  however  "  gentle," 
to  use  Lord  Palmerston's  word,  would  be  allowed  to  pass 
without  obstinate  opposition.  Mr.  Roebuck  described  the 
bill  as  "one  of  the  meanest,  pettiest,  and  most  futile  meas- 
ures that  ever  disgraced  even  bigotry  itself."  Mr.  Bright 
called  it  "  little,  paltry,  and  miserable — a  mere  sham  to  bol- 
ster up  Church  ascendency."  Mr.  Disraeli  declared  that  he 
would  not  oppose  the  introduction  of  the  bill ;  but  he  spoke 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  351 

of  it  in  language  of  as  much  contempt  as  Mr.  Roebuck  and 
Mr.  Bright  had  used,  calling  it  a  mere  piece  of  petty  perse- 
cution. "  Was  it  for  this,"  Mr.  Disraeli  scornfully  asked, 
"  that  the  Lord  Chancellor  trampled  on  a  cardinal's  hat 
amidst  the  patriotic  acclamations  of  the  metropolitan  munic- 
ipality V"  Sir  Robert  Inglis,  on  the  part  of  the  more  extreme 
Protestants,  objected  to  the  bill  on  the  ground  that  it  did 
not  go  far  enough.  The  debate  on  the  motion  for  leave  to 
bring  in  the  bill  was  renewed  for  night  after  night,  and  the 
fullest  promise  of  an  angry  and  prolonged  resistance  was 
given.  Yet  so  strong  was  the  feeling  in  favor  of  some  leg- 
islation that  when  the  division  was  taken,  three  hundred  and 
ninety-five  votes  were  given  for  the  motion  and  only  sixty- 
three  against  it.  The  opponents  of  the  measure  had  on  their 
side  not  only  all  the  prominent  champions  of  religious  liber- 
ty, like  Sir  James  Graham,  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Cobden,  and 
Mr.  Bright,  but  also  Protestant  politicians  of  such  devotion 
to  the  interests  of  the  Church  as  Mr.  Roundell  Palmer,  after- 
ward Lord  Selborne,  and  Mr.  Beresford  Hope ;  and  of  course 
they  had  with  them  all  the  Irish  Catholic  members.  Yet 
the  motion  for  leave  to  bring  in  the  bill  was  carried  by  this 
overwhelming  majority.  The  ministers  had,  at  all  events, 
ample  justification,  so  far  as  Parliamentary  tactics  were 
concerned,  for  the  introduction  of  their  measure. 

If,  however,  we  come  to  regard  the  ministerial  proposal  as 
a  piece  of  practical  legislation,  the  case  to  be  made  out  for 
them  is  not  strong,  nor  is  the  abortive  result  of  their  efforts 
at  all  surprising.  They  set  out  on  the  enterprise  without 
any  real  interest  in  it,  or  any  particular  confidence  in  its 
success.  It  is  probable  that  Lord  John  Russell  alone  of  all 
the  ministers  had  any  expectation  of  a  satisfactory  result  to 
come  of  the  piece  of  legislation  they  were  attempting.  We 
have  seen  what  Lord  Palmerston  thought  on  the  whole  sub- 
ject. The  ministers  were,  in  fact,  in  the  difficulty  of  all 
statesmen  who  bring  in  a  measure,  not  because  they  them- 
selves are  clear  as  to  its  necessity  or  its  efficacy,  but  because 
they  find  that  something  must  be  done  to  satisfy  public  feel- 
ing, and  they  do  not  know  of  anything  better  to  do  at  the 
moment.  The  history  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  was, 
therefore,  a  history  of  blunder,  unlucky  accident,  and  failure 
from  the  moment  it  was  brought  in  until  its  ignominious  and 


352  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

ridiculous  repeal  many  years  after,  and  when  its  absolute 
impotence  had  been  not  merely  demonstrated  but  forgotten. 

The  Government  at  first,  as  we  have  seen,  resolved  to  im- 
pose a  penalty  on  the  assumption  of  ecclesiastical  titles  by 
Roman  Catholic  prelates  from  places  in  the  United  King- 
dom, and  to  make  null  and  void  all  acts  done  or  bequests 
made  in  virtue  of  such  titles.  But  they  found  that  it  would 
be  absolutely  impossible  to  apply  such  legislation  to  Ire- 
land. In  that  country  a  Catholic  hierarchy  had  long  been 
tolerated,  and  all  the  functions  of  a  regular  hierarchy  had 
been  in  full  and  formal  operation.  To  apply  the  new  meas- 
ure to  Ireland  would  have  been  virtually  to  repeal  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Relief  Act  and  restore  the  penal  laws.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  ministers  were  not  willing  to  make  one 
law  against  titles  for  England  and  another  for  Ireland.  They 
were  driven,  therefore,  to  the  course  of  withdrawing  two  of 
the  stringent  clauses  of  the  bill,  and  leaving  it  little  more 
than  a  mere  declaration  against  the  assumption  of  unlawful 
titles.  But  by  doing  this  they  furnished  stronger  reasons 
for  opposition  to  both  of  the  two  very  different  parties  who 
had  hitherto  denounced  their  way  of  dealing  with  the  crisis. 
Those  who  thought  the  bill  did  not  go  far  enough  before 
were,  of  course,  indignant  at  the  proposal  to  shear  it  of  what- 
ever little  force  it  had  originally  possessed.  They,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  had  opposed  it  as  a  breach  of  the  principle 
of  religious  liberty  could  now  ridicule  it  with  all  the  great- 
er effect,  on  the  ground  that  it  violated  a  principle  without 
even  the  pretext  of  doing  any  practical  good  as  a  compensa- 
tion. In  the  first  instance,  the  ministry  might  plead  that  the 
crisis  was  exceptional;  that  it  called  for  exceptional  meas- 
ures; that  something  must  be  done;  and  that  they  could 
not  stand  on  ceremony  even  with  the  principle  of  religious 
liberty  when  the  interest  of  the  State  was  at  stake.  Now 
they  left  it  in  the  power  of  their  opponents  to  say  that 
they  were  breaking  a  principle  for  the  sake  of  introducing  a 
nonentity. 

The  debates  were  long,  fierce,  and  often  passionate.  The 
bill,  even  cut  down  as  it  was,  had  a  vast  majority  on  its 
side.  But  some  of  the  most  illustrious  names  in  the  House 
of  Commons  were  recorded  against  it ;  by  far  the  most  elo- 
quent voices  in  the  House  were  raised  to  condemn  it.  The 


THE    ECCLESIASTICAL   TITLES   BILL.  353 

Irish  Roman  Catholic  members  set  up  a  persistent  opposi- 
tion to  it,  and  up  to  a  certain  period  of  its  progress  put  in 
requisition  all  the  forms  of  the  House  to  impede  it.  This 
part  of  the  story  ought  not  to  be  passed  over  without  men- 
tion of  the  fact  that  among  other  effects  produced  by  the 
Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill,  perhaps  the  most  distinct  was  the 
creation  of  the  most  worthless  band  of  agitators  who  ever 
pretended  to  speak  with  the  voice  of  Ireland.  These  were 
the  men  who  were  called  in  the  House  "the  Pope's  Brass 
Band,"  and  who  were  regarded  with  as  much  dislike  and 
distrust  by  all  intelligent  Irish  Catholics  and  Irish  Nation- 
alists as  by  the  most  inveterate  Tories.  These  men  leaped 
into  influence  by  their  denunciations  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Titles  Bill.  They  were  successful  for  a  time  in  palming 
themselves  off  as  patriots  upon  Irish  constituencies.  They 
thundered  against  the  bill;  they  put  in  motion  every  mech- 
anism of  delay  and  obstruction  ;  some  of  them  were  really 
clever  and  eloquent;  most  of  them  were  loud-voiced;  they 
had  a  grand  and  heaven-sent  opportunity  given  to  them,  and 
they  made  use  of  it.  They  had  a  leader,  the  once  famous 
John  Sadleir.  This  man  possessed  marked  ability,  and  was 
further  gifted  with  an  unscrupulous  audacity  at  least  equal 
to  his  ability.  He  went  to  work  deliberately  to  create  for 
himself  a  band  of  followers  by  whose  help  he  might  mount 
to  power.  He  was  a  financial  swindler  as  well  as  a  political 
adventurer.  By  means  of  the  money  he  had  suddenly  ac- 
quired, and  by  virtue  of  his  furious  denunciations  of  the  anti- 
Catholic  policy  of  the  Government,  he  was,  for  a  time,  able 
to  work  the  Irish  popular  constituencies  so  as  to  get  his  own 
followers  into  the  House  and  become  for  the  hour  a  sort  of 
little  O'Connell.  He  had  with  him  some  two  or  three  hon- 
est men,  whom  he  deluded  into  a  belief  in  the  sincerity  of 
himself  and  his  gang  of  swindling  adventurers;  and  it  is  only 
fair  to  say  that  by  far  the  most  eloquent  man  of  the  party 
appears  to  have  been  one  of  those  on  whom  Sadleir  was  thus 
able  to  impose.  Mr.  Sadleir's  band  afterward  came  to  sad 
grief.  He  committed  .suicide  himself  to  escape  the  punish- 
ment of  his  frauds ;  some  of  his  associates  fled  to  foreign 
countries  and  hid  themselves  under  feigned  names.  James 
Sadleir,  brother  and  accomplice  of  John,  was  among  these, 
and  underwent  that  rare  mark  of  degradation  in  our  days, 


354  A   HISTORY   OF   OUIi  OWN  TIMES. 

a  formal  expulsion  from  the  House  of  Commons.  The  Pope's 
Brass  Band  and  its  subsequent  history,  culminating  in  the 
suicide  on  Hampstead  Heath,  was  about  the  only  practical 
result  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill. 

The  bill,  reduced  in  stringency  as  has  been  described, 
made,  however,  some  progress  through  the  House.  It  was 
interrupted  at  one  stage  by  events  which  had  nothing  to  do 
with  its  history.  The  Government  got  into  trouble  of  an- 
other kind.  At  the  opening  of  the  session  Mr.  Disraeli  in- 
troduced a  motion  to  the  effect  that  the  agricultural  distress 
of  the  country  called  upon  the  Government  to  introduce 
without  delay  some  measures  for  its  relief.  This  motion 
was,  in  fact,  the  last  spasmodic  cry  of  Protection.  Many  in- 
fluential politicians  still  believed  that  the  cause  of  Protec- 
tion was  not  wholly  lost ;  that  a  reaction  was  possible ;  that 
the  Free-trade  doctrine  would  prove  a  failure  and  have  to 
be  given  up ;  and  they  regarded  Mr.  Disraeli's  as  a  very  im- 
portant motion  calling  for  a  strenuous  effort  in  its  favor. 
The  Government  treated  the  motion  as  one  for  restored 
Protection,  and  threw  all  their  strength  into  the  struggle 
against  it.  They  won,  but  only  by  a  majority  of  fourteen. 
A  few  days  after,  Mr.  Locke  King,  member  for  East  Surrey, 
asked  for  leave  to  bring  in  a  bill  to  assimilate  the  county 
franchise  to  that  existing  in  boroughs.  Lord  John  Russell 
opposed  the  motion,  and  the  Government  were  defeated  by 
100  votes  against  52.  It  was  evident  that  this  was  only 
what  is  called  a  "  snap  "  vote ;  that  the  House  was  taken  by 
surprise,  and  that  the  result  in  nowise  represented  the  gen- 
eral feeling  of  Parliament.  But  still  it  was  a  vexatious  oc- 
currence for  the  ministry  already  humiliated  by  the  small 
majority  they  had  obtained  on  Disraeli's  motion.  Their 
budget  had  already  been  received  with  very  general  marks 
of  dissatisfaction.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  only 
proposed  a  partial  and  qualified  repeal  of  the  window-tax,  an 
impost  which  was  justly  detested,  and  he  continued  the  in- 
come-tax. The  budget  was  introduced  shortly  before  Mr. 
Locke  King's  motion,  and  every  day  that  had  elapsed  since 
its  introduction  only  more  and  more  developed  the  public 
dissatisfaction  with  which  it  was  regarded.  IJnder  all  these 
circumstances  Lord  John  Russell  felt  that  he  had  no  alter- 
native but  to  tender  his  resignation  to  the  Queen.  Leaving 


THE   ECCLESIASTICAL   TITLES  BILL.  355 

his  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill  suspended  in  air,  he  announced 
that  he  could  no  longer  think  of  carrying  on  the  government 
of  the  country. 

The  question  was,  who  should  succeed  him.  The  Queen 
sent  for  Lord  Stanley,  afterward  Lord  Derby.  Lord  Stan- 
ley offered  to  do  his  best  to  form  a  Government,  but  was 
not  at  all  sanguine  about  the  success  of  the  task,  nor  eager 
to  undertake  it.  He  even  recommended  that  before  he  made 
any  experiment  Lord  John  Russell  should  try  if  he  could 
not  do  something  by  getting  some  of  the  Peelites,  as  they 
were  then  beginning  to  be  called — the  followers  of  Sir  Rob- 
ert Peel  who  had  held  with  him  to  the  last — to  join  him,  and 
thus  patch  up  the  Government  anew.  This  was  tried,  and 
failed.  The  Peelites  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Ec- 
clesiastical Titles  Bill,  and  Lord  John  Russell  would  not 
go  on  without  it.  On  the  other  hand,  Lord  Aberdeen,  the 
chief  of  the  Peelites  in  the  House  of  Lords,  would  not  at- 
tempt to  form  a  ministry  of  his  own,  frankly  acknowledging 
that  in  the  existing  temper  of  the  country  it  would  be  im- 
possible for  any  Government  to  get  on  without  legislating 
in  some  way  on  the  Papal  aggression.  There  was  nothing 
for  it  but  for  Lord  Stanley  to  try.  He  tried  without  hope, 
and  of  course  he  was  unsuccessful.  The  position  of  parties 
was  very  peculiar.  It  was  impossible  to  form  any  combina- 
tion which  could  really  agree  upon  anything.  There  were 
three  parties  out  of  which  a  ministry  might  be  formed. 
These  were  the  Whigs,  the  Conservatives,  and  the  Peelites. 
The  Peelites  were  a  very  rising  and  promising  body  of  men. 
Among  them  were  Sir  James  Graham,  Lord  Canning,  Mr. 
Gladstone,  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert,  Mr.  Cardwell,  and  some  oth- 
ers almost  equally  well  known.  Only  these  three  groups 
were  fairly  in  the  competition  for  office ;  for  the  idea  of  a 
ministry  of  Radicals  and  Manchester  men  was  not  then  like- 
ly to  present  itself  to  any  official  mind.  But  how  could  any 
one  put  together  a  ministry  formed  from  a  combination  of 
these  three  ?  The  Peelites  would  not  coalesce  with  the  To- 
ries because  of  the  Protection  question,  to  which  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli's motion  had  given  a  new  semblance  of  vitality,  and  be- 
cause of  Lord  Stanley's  own  declaration  that  he  still  regard- 
ed the  policy  of  Free-trade  as  only  an  experiment.  The 
Peelites  would  not  combine  with  the  Whigs  because  of  the 


356  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill.  The  Conservatives  would  not  dis- 
avow protective  ideas ;  the  Whigs  would  not  give  up  the  Ec- 
clesiastical Titles  Bill.  No  statesman,  therefore,  could  form 
a  Government  without  having  to  count  on  two  great  parties 
being  against  him  on  one  question  or  the  other.  All  man- 
ner of  delays  took  place.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  was  con- 
sulted ;  Lord  Lansdowne  was  consulted.  The  wit  of  man 
could  suggest  nothing  satisfactory.  The  conditions  for  ex- 
tracting any  satisfactory  solution  did  not  exist.  There  was 
nothing  better  to  be  done  than  to  ask  the  ministers  who  had 
resigned  to  resume  their  places  and  muddle  on  as  they  best 
could.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  there  was  nothing  bet- 
ter to  be  done :  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  done.  They 
were,  at  all  events,  still  administering  the  affairs  of  the  coun- 
try, and  no  one  would  relieve  them  of  the  task.  Ipso  facto 
they  had  to  stay. 

The  ministers  returned  to  their  places  and  resumed  the 
Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill.  It  was  then  that  they  made  the 
change  in  its  conditions  which  has  already  been  mentioned, 
and  thus  created  new  argument  against  them  on  both  sides 
of  the  House  of  Commons.  They  struck  out  of  the  bill  ev- 
ery word  that  might  appear  like  an  encroachment  on  the 
Roman  Church  within  the  sphere  of  its  own  ecclesiastical 
operations,  and  made  it  simply  an  Act  against  the  public 
and  ostentatious  assumption  of  illegal  titles.  The  bill  was 
wrangled  over  until  the  end  of  June,  and  then  a  large  num- 
ber, some  seventy,  of  the  Irish  Catholic  members  publicly 
seceded  from  the  discussion,  and  announced  that  they  would 
take  no  further  part  in  the  divisions.  On  this  some  of  the 
strongest  opponents  of  the  Papal  aggression,  led  by  Sir 
Frederick  Thesiger,  afterward  Lord  Chehnsford,  brought  in 
a  series  of  resolutions  intended  to  make  the  bill  more  strin- 
gent than  it  had  been  even  as  originally  introduced.  The 
object  of  the  resolutions  was  principally  to  give  the  power 
of  prosecuting  and  claiming  a  penalty  to  anybody,  provided 
he  obtained  the  consent  of  the  law-officers  of  the  Crown,  and 
to  make  penal  the  introduction  of  bulls.  The  Government 
opposed  the  introduction  of  these  amendments,  and  were  put 
in  the  awkward  position  of  having  to  act  as  antagonists  of 
the  party  in  the  country  who  represented  the  strongest  hos- 
tility to  the  Papal  aggression.  Thus,  for  the  moment,  the 


THE  ECCLESIASTICAL  TITLES  BILL.  357 

author  of  the  Durham  letter  was  seemingly  converted  into 
a  champion  of  the  Roman  Catholic  side  of  the  controversy. 
His  championship  was  ineffective.  The  Irish  members  took 
no  part  in  the  controversy,  and  the  Government  were  beat- 
en by  the  ultra-Protestant  party  on  every  division.  Lord 
John  Russell  was  bitterly  taunted  by  various  of  his  op- 
ponents, and  was  asked  with  indignation  why  he  did  not 
withdraw  the  bill  when  it  ceased  to  be  any  longer  his  own 
scheme.  He  probably  thought  by  this  time  that  it  really 
made  little  matter  what  bill  was  passed  so  long  as  any  bill 
was  passed,  and  that  the  best  thing  to  do  was  to  get  the 
controversy  out  of  the  way  by  any  process.  He  did  not, 
therefore,  withdraw  the  bill,  although  Sir  Frederick  Thesiger 
carried  all  his  stringent  clauses.  When  the  measure  came 
on  for  a  third  reading,  Lord  John  Russell  moved  the  omis- 
sion of  the  added  clauses,  but  he  was  defeated  by  large  ma- 
jorities. The  bill  was  done  with  so  far  as  the  House  of 
Commons  was  concerned.  After  an  eloquent  and  powerful 
protest  from  Mr.  Gladstone  against  the  measure,  as  one  dis- 
paraging to  the  great  principle  of  religious  freedom,  the  bill 
was  read  a  third  time.  It  went  up  to  the  House  of  Lords, 
was  passed  there  without  alteration,  although  not  without 
opposition,  and  soon  after  received  the  Royal  assent. 

This  was  practically  the  last  the  world  heard  about  it. 
In  the  Roman  Church  everything  went  on  as  before.  The 
new  Cardinal  Archbishop  still  called  himself  Archbishop  of 
Westminster;  some  of  the  Irish  prelates  made  a  point  of 
ostentatiously  using  their  territorial  titles,  in  letters  address- 
ed to  the  ministers  themselves.  The  bitterness  of  feeling 
which  the  Papal  aggression  and  the  legislation  against  it 
had  called  up  did  not  indeed  pass  away  very  soon.  It  broke 
out  again  and  again,  sometimes  in  the  form  of  very  serious 
riot.  It  turned  away,  at  many  an  election,  the  eyes  and 
minds  of  the  constituencies  from  questions  of  profound  and 
genuine  public  interest  to  dogmatic  controversy  and  the 
hates  of  jarring  sectaries.  It  furnished  political  capital  for 
John  Sadleir  and  his  band,  and  kept  them  flourishing  for 
awhile ;  and  it  set  up  in  the  Irish  popular  mind  a  purely  im- 
aginary figure  of  Lord  John  Russell,  who  became  regarded 
as  the  malign  enemy  of  the  Catholic  faith  and  of  all  relig- 
ious liberty.  But,  save  for  the  quarrels  aroused  at  the  time, 


358  A  HISTOKY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  act  of  the  Pope  and  the  Act  of  Parliament  were  alike 
dead  letters.  Nothing  came  of  the  Papal  bull.  England 
was  not  restored  to  the  communion  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the  Bishop  of 
London  retained  their  places  and  their  spiritual  jurisdiction 
as  before.  Cardinal  Wiseman  remained  only  a  prelate  of 
Roman  Catholics.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Ecclesiastical  Ti- 
tles Act  was  never  put  in  force.  Nobody  troubled  about 
it.  Many  years  after,  in  1871,11  was  quietly  repealed.  It 
died  in  such  obscurity  that  the  outer  public  hardly  knew 
whether  it  was  above  ground  or  below.  Certainly,  if  the 
whole  agitation  showed  that  England  was  thoroughly  Prot- 
estant, it  also  showed  that  English  Protestants  had  not 
much  of  the  persecuting  spirit.  They  had  no  inclination  to 
molest  their  Catholic  neighbors,  and  only  asked  to  be  let 
alone.  The  Pope,  they  be'lieved,  had  insulted  them ;  they 
resented  the  insult :  that  was  all. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE  EXHIBITION   IN  HYDE   PAKE. 

THE  first  of  May,  1851,  will  always  be  memorable  as  the 
day  on  which  the  Great  Exhibition  was  opened  in  Hyde 
Park.  The  year  1851,  indeed,  is  generally  associated  in  the 
memory  of  Englishmen  with  that  first  Great  International 
Exhibition.  As  we  look  back  upon  it  pleasant  recollections 
come  up  of  the  great  glass  palace  in  Hyde  Park,  the  palace 
"  upspringing  from  the  verdant  sod,"  which  Thackeray  de- 
scribed so  gracefully  and  with  so  much  poetic  feeling.  The 
strange  crowds  of  the  curious  of  all  provinces  and  all  nations 
are  seen  again.  The  marvellous  and  at  that  time  wholly 
unprecedented  collection  of  the  products  of  all  countries; 
the  glitter  of  the  Koh-i-Noor,  the  palm-trees  beneath  the 
glass  roof,  the  leaping  fountains,  the  statuary,  the  ores,  the 
ingots,  the  huge  blocks  of  coal,  the  lace-work,  the  loom- work; 
the  Oriental  stuffs — all  these  made  on  the  mind  of  the  or- 
dinary inexpert  a  confused  impression  of  lavishness,  and 
profusion,  and  order,  and  fantastic  beauty  which  was  then 
wholly  novel,  and  could  hardly  be  recalled  except  in  mere 


THE   EXHIBITION   IN   HYDE   PARK.  359 

memory.  The  novelty  of  the  experiment  was  that  which 
made  it  specially  memorable.  Many  exhibitions  of  a  similar 
kind  have  taken  place  since.  Some  of  these  far  surpassed 
that  of  Hyde  Park  in  the  splendor  and  variety  of  the  collec- 
tions brought  together.  Two  of  them  at  least  —  those  of 

o  O 

Paris  in  1867  and  1878 — were  infinitely  superior  in  the  array 
and  display  of  the  products,  the  dresses,  the  inhabitants  of 
far-divided  countries.  But  the  impression  which  the  Hyde 
Park  Exhibition  made  upon  the  ordinary  mind  was  like  that 
of  the  boy's  first  visit  to  the  play — an  impression  never  to 
be  equalled,  no  matter  by  what  far  superior  charm  of  spec- 
tacle it  may  in  after-years  again  and  again  be  followed. 

Golden,  indeed,  were  the  expectations  with  which  hopeful 
people  welcomed  the  Exhibition  of  1851.  It  was  the  first 
organized  to  gather  all  the  representatives  of  the  world's 
industry  into  one  great  fair;  and  there  were  those  who 
seriously  expected  that  men  who  had  once  been  prevailed 
upon  to  meet  together  in  friendly  and  peaceful  rivalry  would 
never  again  be  persuaded  to  meet  in  rivalry  of  a  fiercer  kind. 
It  seems  extraordinary  now  to  think  that  any  sane  person 
can  have  indulged  in  such  expectations,  or  can  have  imag- 
ined that  the  tremendous  forces  generated  by  the  rival  in- 
terests, ambitions,  and  passions  of  races  could  be  subdued 
into  harmonious  co-operation  by  the  good  sense  and  good 
feeling  born  of  a  friendly  meeting.  The  Hyde  Park  Exhi- 
bition, and  all  the  exhibitions  that  followed  it,  have  not  as 
yet  made  the  slightest  perceptible  difference  in  the  warlike 
tendencies  of  nations.  The  Hyde  Park  Exhibition  was 
often  described  as  the  festival  to  open  the  long  reign  of 
Peace.  It  might,  as  a  mere  matter  of  chronology,  be  called 
without  any  impropriety  the  festival  to  celebrate  the  close 
of  the  short  reign  of  Peace.  From  that  year,  1851,  it  may 
be  said  fairly  enough  that  the  world  has  hardly  known  a 
week  of  peace.  The  coup  (Petal  in  France  closed  the  year. 
The  Crimean  War  began  almost  immediately  after,  and  was 
followed  by  the  Indian  Mutiny,  and  that  by  the  war  between 
France  and  Austria,  the  long  civil  war  in  the  United  States, 
the  Neapolitan  enterprises  of  Garibaldi,  and  the  Mexican 
intervention,  until  we  come  to  the  war  between  Austria, 
Prussia,  and  Denmark ;  the  short,  sharp  struggle  for  German 
supremacy  between  Austria  and  Prussia,  the  war  between 


860  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

France  and  Germany,  and  the  war  between  Russia  and  Tur- 
key. Such  were,  in  brief  summary,  the  events  that  quickly 
followed  the  great  inaugurating  Festival  of  Peace  in  1851. 
Of  course  those  who  organized  the  Great  Exhibition  were 
in  no  way  responsible  for  the  exalted  and  extravagant  ex- 
pectations which  were  formed  as  to  its  effects  on  the  history 
of  the  world  and  the  elements  of  human  nature.  But  there 
was  a  great  deal  too  much  of  the  dithyrambic  about  the 
style  in  which  many  writers  and  speakers  thought  fit  to 
describe  the  Exhibition.  With  some  of  these  all  this  was 
the  result  of  genuine  enthusiasm.  In  other  instances  the 
extravagance  was  indulged  in  by  persons  not  habitually 
extravagant,  but,  on  the  contrary,  very  sober,  methodical, 
and  calculating,  who  by  the  very  fact  of  their  possessing 
eminently  these  qualities  were  led  into  a  total  misconcep- 
tion of  the  influence  of  such  assemblages  of  men.  These 
calm  and  wise  persons  assumed  that  because  they  them- 
selves, if  shown  that  a  certain  course  of  conduct  was  for 
their  material  and  moral  benefit,  would  instantly  follow  it 
and  keep  to  it,  it  must  therefore  follow  that  all  peoples  and 
states  were  amenable  to  the  same  excellent  principle  of  self- 
discipline.  War  is  a  foolish  and  improvident,  not  to  say 
immoral  and  atrocious,  way  of  trying  to  adjust  our  disputes, 
they  argued;  let  peoples  far  divided  in  geographical  situa- 
tion be  only  brought  together  and  induced  to  talk  this  over, 
and  see  how  much  more  profitable  and  noble  is  the  rivalry 
of  peace  in  trade  and  commerce,  and  they  will  never  think 
of  the  coarse  and  brutal  arbitrament  of  battle  any  more. 
Not  a  few  others,  it  must  be  owned,  indulged  in  the  high- 
flown  glorification  of  the  reign  of  peace  to  come  because  the 
Exhibition  was  the  special  enterprise  of  the  Prince  Consort, 
and  they  had  a  natural  aptitude  for  the  production  of  courtly 
strains.  But  among  all  these  classes  of  pa3an-singers  it  did 
happen  that  a  good  deal  of  unmerited  discredit  was  cast 
upon  the  results  of  the  Great  Exhibition,  for  the  enterprise 
was  held  responsible  for  illusions  it  had  of  itself  nothing  to 
do  with  creating,  and  disappointments  which  were  no  con- 
sequence of  any  failure  on  its  part.  Even  upon  trade  and 
production  it  is  very  easy  to  exaggerate  the  beneficent  in- 
fluences of  an  international  exhibition.  But  that  such  enter- 
prises have  some  beneficial  influence  is  beyond  doubt;  and 


THE   EXHIBITION    IN   HYDE   PARK.  361 

that  they  are  interesting,  instructive,  well  calculated  to  edu- 
cate and  refine  the  minds  of  nations,  may  be  admitted  by 
the  least  enthusiastic  of  men. 

The  first  idea  of  the  Exhibition  was  conceived  by  Prince 
Albert;  and  it  was  his  energy  and  influence  which  succeed- 
ed in  carrying  the  idea  into  practical  execution.  Probably 
no  influence  less  great  than  that  which  his  station  gave  to 
the  Prince  would  have  prevailed  to  carry  to  success  so  diffi- 
cult an  enterprise.  There  had  been  industrial  exhibitions 
before  on  a  small  scale  and  of  local  limit;  but  if  the  idea  of 
an  exhibition  in  which  all  the  nations  of  the  world  were  to 
compete  had  occurred  to  other  minds  before,  as  it  may  well 
have  done,  it  was  merely  as  a  vague  thought,  a  day-dream, 
without  any  claim  to  a  practical  realization.  Prince  Albert 
was  President  of  the  Society  of  Arts,  and  this  position  se- 
cured him  a  platform  for  the  effective  promulgation  of  his 
ideas.  On  June  30th,  1849,  he  called  a  meeting  of  the  Soci- 
ety of  Arts  at  Buckingham  Palace.  He  proposed  that  the 
Society  should  undertake  the  initiative  in  the  promotion  of 
an  exhibition  of  the  works  of  all  nations.  The  main  idea  of 
Prince  Albert  was  that  the  exhibition  should  be  divided  into 
four  great  sections — the  first  to  contain  raw  materials  and 
produce;  the  second,  machinery  for  ordinary  industrial  and 
productive  purposes,  and  mechanical  inventions  of  the  more 
ingenious  kind ;  the  third,  manufactured  articles ;  and  the 
fourth,  sculpture,  models,  and  the  illustrations  of  the  plastic 
arts  generally.  The  idea  was  at  once  taken  up  by  the  Soci- 
ety of  Arts,  and  by  their  agency  spread  abroad.  On  October 
17th  in  the  same  year  a  meeting  of  merchants  and  bankers 
was  held  in  London  to  promote  the  success  of  the  under- 
taking. In  the  first  few  days  of  1850  a  formal  Commission 
was  appointed  "for  the  promotion  of  the  Exhibition  of 
the  Works  of  All  Nations,  to  be  holden  in  the  year  1851." 
Prince  Albert  was  appointed  President  of  the  Commission. 
The  enterprise  was  now  fairly  launched.  A  few  days  after, 
a  meeting  was  held  in  the  Mansion  House  to  raise  funds  in 
aid  of  the  Exhibition,  and  ten  thousand  pounds  was  at  once 
collected.  This,  of  course,  was  but  the  beginning,  and  a 
guarantee  fund  of  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  was  very 
soon  obtained. 

On  March  21st,  in  the  same  year,  the  Lord  Mayor  ofLon- 

I.— 16 


fc3b'2  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

don  gave  a  banquet  at  the  Mansion  House  to  the  chief 
magistrates  of  the  cities,  towns,  and  boroughs  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  for  the  purpose  of  inviting  their  co-operation  in 
support  of  the  undertaking.  Prince  Albert  was  present,  and 
spoke.  He  had  cultivated  the  art  of  speaking  with  much 
success,  and  had  almost  entirely  overcome  whatever  difficul- 
ty stood  in  his  way  from  his  foreign  birth  and  education. 
He  never  quite  lost  his  foreign  accent.  No  man  coming  to 
a  new  country  at  the  age  of  manhood  as  Prince  Albert  did 
ever  acquired  the  new  tongue  in  such  a  manner  as  to  lose 
all  trace  of  a  foreign  origin ;  and  to  the  end  of  his  career 
Prince  Albert  spoke  with  an  accent  which,  however  careful- 
ly trained,  still  betrayed  its  early  habitudes.  But,  except 
for  this  slight  blemish,  Prince  Albert  may  be  said  to  have 
acquired  a  perfect  mastery  of  the  English  language,  and  he 
became  a  remarkably  good  public  speaker.  He  had,  indeed, 
nothing  of  the  orator  in  his  nature.  It  was  but  the  extrav- 
agance of  courtliness  which  called  his  polished  and  thought- 
ful speeches  oratory.  In  the  Prince's  nature  there  was  nei- 
ther the  passion  nor  the  poetry  that  are  essential  to  genuine 
eloquence ;  nor  were  the  occasions  on  which  he  addressed 
the  English  people  likely  to  stimulate  a  man  to  eloquence. 
But  his  style  of  speaking  was  clear,  thoughtful,  stately,  and 
sometimes  even  noble.  It  exactly  suited  its  purpose.  It 
was  that  of  a  man  who  did  not  set  up  for  an  orator;  and 
who,  when  he  spoke,  wished  that  his  ideas  rather  than  his 
words  should  impress  his  hearers.  It  is  very  much  to  be 
doubted  whether  the  English  public  would  be  quite  delight- 
ed to  have  a  prince  who  was  also  a  really  great  orator. 
Genuine  eloquence  would  probably  impress  a  great  many 
respectable  persons  as  a  gift  not  exactly  suited  to  a  prince. 
There  is  even  still  a  certain  distrust  of  the  artistic  in  the 
English  mind  as  of  a  sort  of  thing  which  is  very  proper  in  pro- 
fessional writers  and  painters  and  speakers,  but  which  would 
hardly  become  persons  of  the  highest  station.  Prince  Al- 
bert probably  spoke  just  as  well  as  he  could  have  done  with 
successful  effect  upon  his  English  audiences.  At  the  dinner 
in  the  Mansion  House  he  spoke  with  great  clearness  and 
grace  of  the  purposes  of  the  Great  Exhibition.  It  was,  he 
said,  to  "  give  the  world  a  true  test,  a  living  picture,  of  the 
point  of  industrial  development  at  which  the  whole  of  man- 


THE   EXHIBITION   IN   HYDE  PARK.  363 

kind  has  arrived,  and  a  new  starting-point  from  which  all 
nations  will  be  able  to  direct  their  further  exertions." 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  the  project  of 
the  Great  Exhibition  advanced  wholly  without  opposition. 
Many  persons  were  disposed  to  sneer  at  it;  many  were  scep- 
tical about  its  doing  any  good ;  not  a  few  still  regarded 
Prince  Albert  as  a  foreigner  and  a  pedant,  and  were  slow  to 
believe  that  anything  really  practical  was  likely  to  be  de- 
veloped under  his  impulse  and  protection.  A  very  whim- 
sical sort  of  opposition  was  raised  in  the  House  of  Commons 
by  a  once  famous  eccentric,  the  late  Colonel  Sibthorp.  Sib- 
thorp  was  a  man  who  might  have  been  drawn  by  Smollett. 
His  grotesque  gestures,  his  overboiling  energy,  his  uncouth 
appearance,  his  huge  mustache,  marked  him  out  as  an  object 
of  curiosity  in  any  crowd.  He  was  the  subject  of  one  of  the 
most  amusing  pieces  of  impromptu  parody  ever  thrown  off 
by  a  public  speaker — that  in  which  O'Connell  travestied  the 
famous  lines  about  the  three  poets  in  three  different  ages 
born,  and  pictured  three  colonels  in  three  different  countries 
born,  winding  up  with:  "The  force  of  Nature  could  no  far- 
ther go ;  to  beard  the  one  she  shaved  the  other  two."  One 
of  the  gallant  Sibthorp's  especial  weaknesses  was  a  distrust 
and  detestation  of  all  foreigners.  Foreigners  he  lumped  to- 
gether as  a  race  of  beings  whose  chief  characteristics  were 
Popery  and  immorality.  While  three -fourths  of  the  pro- 
moters of  the  Exhibition  were  dwelling  with  the  strongest 
emphasis  on  the  benefit  it  would  bring  by  drawing  into 
London  the  representatives  of  all  nations,  Colonel  Sibthorp 
was  denouncing  this  agglomeration  of  foreigners  as  the 
greatest  curse  that  could  fall  upon  England.  He  regarded 
foreigners  much  as  Isaac  of  York,  in  "  Ivanhoe,"  regards  the 
Knight  Templars.  "When,"  asks  Isaac,  in  bitter  remon- 
strance, "  did  Templars  breathe  aught  but  cruelty  to  men 
and  dishonor  to  women?"  Colonel  Sibthorp  kept  asking 
some  such  question  with  regard  to  foreigners  in  general  and 
their  expected  concourse  to  the  Exhibition.  In  language 
somewhat  too  energetic  and  broad  for  our  more  polite  time, 
he  warned  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  country  of  the 
consequences  to  English  morals  which  must  come  of  the  in- 
flux of  a  crowd  of  foreigners  at  a  given  season.  "  Take 
care,"  he  exclaimed,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  "of  your 


364:  A  HISTORY   OF   OUK   OWN  TIMES. 

wives  and  daughters ;  take  cave  of  your  property  and  your 
lives !"  He  declared  that  he  prayed  for  some  tremendous 
hail-storm  or  visitation  of  lightning  to  be  sent  from  heaven 
expressly  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  in  advance  the 
building  destined  for  the  ill-omened  Exhibition.  When 
Free-trade  had  left  nothing  else  needed  to  complete  the  ruin 
of  the  nation,  the  enemy  of  mankind,  he  declared,  had  in- 
spired us  with  the  idea  of  the  Great  Exhibition,  so  that  the 
foreigners  who  had  first  robbed  us  of  our  trade  might  now 
be  enabled  to  rob  us  of  our  honor. 

The  objections  raised  to  the  Exhibition  Mrere  not  by  any 
means  confined  to  Colonel  Sibthorp  or  to  his  kind  of  argu- 
ment. After  some  consideration  the  Royal  Commissioners 
had  fixed  upon  Hyde  Park  as  the  best  site  for  the  great 
building,  and  many  energetic  and  some  influential  voices 
were  raised  in  fierce  outcry  against  what  was  called  the  prof- 
anation of  the  park.  It  was  argued  that  the  public  use  of 
Hyde  Park  would  be  destroyed  by  the  Exhibition  ;  that  the 
park  would  be  utterly  spoiled;  that  its  beauty  could  never 
be  restored.  A  petition  was  presented  by  Lord  Campbell 
to  the  House  of  Lords  against  the  occupation  of  any  part  of 
Hyde  Park  with  the  Exhibition  building.  Lord  Brougham 
supported  the  petition  with  his  characteristic  impetuosity 
and  vehemence.  He  denounced  the  Attorney-general  with 
indignant  eloquence  because  that  official  had  declined  to  file 
an  application  to  the  Court  of  Chancery  for  an  injunction  to 
stay  any  proceeding  with  the  proposed  building  in  the  park. 
He  denounced  the  House  of  Lords  itself  for  what  he  consid- 
ered its  servile  deference  to  royalty  in  the  matter  of  the  Ex- 
hibition  and  its  site.  He  declared  that  when  he  endeavored 
to  raise  the  question  there  he  was  received  in  dead  silence ; 
and  he  asserted  that  an  effort  to  bring  on  a  discussion  in  the 
House  of  Commons  was  received  with  a  silence  equally  pro- 
found and  servile.  Such  facts,  he  shouted,  only  showed 
more  painfully  "  that  absolute  prostration  of  the  under- 
standing which  takes  place  even  in  the  minds  of  the  bravest 
when  the  word  prince  is  mentioned  in  this  country  !"  It  is. 
probably  true  enough  that  only  the  influence  of  a  prince 
could  have  carried  the  scheme  to  success  against  the  storms 
of  opposition  that  began  to  blow  at  various  periods  and 
from  different  points.  Undoubtedly  a  vast  number,  prob- 


THE   EXHIBITION   IN  HYDE   PARK.  365 

ably  the  great  majority,  of  those  who  supported  the  enter- 
prise in  the  beginning  did  so  simply  because  it  was  the  proj- 
ect of  a  prince.  Their  numbers  and  their  money  enabled 
it  to  be  carried  on,  and  secured  it  the  test  of  the  world's 
examination  and  approval.  In  that  sense  the  very  servili- 
ty which  accepts  with  delight  whatever  a  prince  proposes 
stood  the  Exhibition  in  good  stead.  A  courtier  may  plead 
that  if  English  people  in  general  had  been  more  independent 
and  less  given  to  admiration  of  princes,  the  excellent  project 
devised  by  Prince  Albert  would  never  have  had  a  fair  trial. 
Many  times  during  its  progress  the  Prince  himself  trembled 
for  the  success  of  his  scheme.  Many  a  time  he  must  have 
felt  inclined  to  renounce  it,  or  at  least  to  regret  that  he  had 
ever  taken  it  up. 

Absurd  as  the  opposition  to  the  scheme  may  now  seem, 
it  is  certain  that  a  great  many  sensible  persons  thought  the 
moment  singularly  inopportune  for  the  gathering  of  large 
crowds,  and  were  satisfied  that  some  inconvenient,  if  not 
dangerous,  public  demonstration  must  be  provoked.  The 
smouldering  embers  of  Chartism,  they  said,  were  everywhere 
under  society's  feet.  The  crowds  of  foreigners  whom  Col- 
onel Sibthorp  so  dreaded  would,  calmer  people  said,  natu- 
rally include  large  numbers  of  the  "Reds"  of  all  Conti- 
nental nations,  who  would  be  only  too  glad  to  coalesce  with 
Chartism  and  discontent  of  all  kinds,  for  the  purpose  of  dis- 
turbing the  peace  of  London.  The  agitation  caused  by  the 
Papal  aggression  was  still  in  full  force  and  flame.  By  an 
odd  coincidence  the  first  column  of  the  Exhibition  building 
had  been  set  up  in  Hyde  Park  almost  at  the  same  moment 
with  the  issue  of  the  Papal  bull  establishing  a  Roman  Cath- 
olic hierarchy  in  England.  These  conditions  looked  gloomy 
for  the  project.  "  The  opponents  of  the  Exhibition,"  wrote 
the  Prince  himself,  "  work  with  might  and  main  to  throw 
all  the  old  women  here  into  a  panic  and  to  drive  myself 
crazy.  The  strangers,  they  give  out,  are  certain  to  com- 
mence a  thorough  revolution  here,  to  murder  Victoria  and 
myself,  and  to  proclaim  the  Red  Republic  in  England ;  the 
plague  is  certain  to  ensue  from  the  confluence  of  such  .vast 
multitudes,  and  to  swallow  up  those  whom  the  increased 
price  of  everything  has  not  already  swept  away.  For  all 
this  I  am  to  be  responsible,  and  against  all  this  I  have  to 


366  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

make  efficient  provision."  Most  of  the  Continental  sover- 
eigns looked  coldly  on  the  undertaking.  The  King  of  Prus- 
sia took  such  alarm  at  the  thought  of  the  Red  Republicans 
whom  the  Exhibition  would  draw  together,  that  at  first  he 
positively  prohibited  his  brother,  then  Prince  of  Prussia, 
now  German  Emperor,  from  attending  the  opening  ceremo- 
nial; and  though  he  afterward  withdrew  the  prohibition,  he 
remained  full  of  doubts  and  fears  as  to  the  pei'sonal  safety 
of  any  royal  or  princely  personage  found  in  Hyde  Park  on 
the  opening  day.  The  Duke  of  Cambridge,  being  appealed 
to  on  the  subject,  acknowledged  himself  also  full  of  appre- 
hensions. The  objections  to  the  site  continued  to  grow  up 
to  a  certain  time.  "  The  Exhibition,"  Prince  Albert  wrote 
once  to  Baron  Stockmar,  his  friend  and  adviser,  "is  now  at- 
tacked furiously  by  the  Times,  and  the  House  of  Commons 
is  going  to  drive  us  out  of  the  park.  There  is  immense  ex- 
citement on  the  subject.  If  we  are  driven  out  of  the  park 
the  work  is  done  for."  At  one  time,  indeed,  this  result 
seemed  highly  probable ;  but  public  opinion  gradually  un- 
derwent a  change,  and  the  opposition  to  the  site  was  defeat- 
ed in  the  House  of  Commons  by  a  large  majority. 

Even,  however,  when  the  question  of  the  site  had  been 
disposed  of,  there  remained  immense  difficulties  in  the  way. 
The  press  was  not,  on  the  whole,  very  favorable  to  the  proj- 
ect; Punch,  in  particular,  was  hardly  ever  weary  of  mak- 
ing fun  of  it.  Such  a  project,  while  yet  only  in  embryo, 
undoubtedly  furnished  many  points  on  which  satire  could 
fasten ;  and  nothing  short  of  complete  success  could  save  it 
from  falling  under  a  mountain  of  ridicule.  No  half  success 
would  have  rescued  it.  The  ridicule  was  naturally  provoked 
and  aggravated  to  an  unspeakable  degree  by  the  hyperbol- 
ical expectations  and  preposterous  dithyrambics  of  some  of 
the  well-meaning  but  unwise  and  somewhat  too  obstreper- 
ously loyal  supporters  of  the  enterprise.  To  add  to  all  this, 
as  the  time  for  the  opening  drew  near,  some  of  the  foreign 
diplomatists  in  London  began  to  sulk  at  the  whole  project. 
There  were  small  points  of  objection  made  about  the  posi- 
tioa  and  functions  of  foreign  ambassadors  at  the  opening 
ceremonial,  and  what  the  Queen  and  Prince  meant  for  po- 
liteness was,  in  one  instance  at  least,  near  being  twisted  into 
cause  of  offence.  Up  to  the  last  moment  it  was  not  quite 


THE   EXHIBITION   IN  HYDE   PARK.  367 

certain  whether  an  absurd  diplomatic  quarrel  might  not  have 
been  part  of  the  inaugural  ceremonies  of  the  opening  day. 

The  Prince  did  not  despair,  however,  and  the  project  went 
on.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  difficulty  in  selecting  a  plan 
for  the  building.  Huge  structures  of  brick- work,  looking 
like  enormous  railway  sheds,  costly  and  hideous  at  once, 
were  proposed ;  it  seemed  almost  certain  that  some  one  of 
them  must  be  chosen.  Happily,  a  sudden  inspiration  struck 
Mr.  (afterward  Sir  Joseph)  Paxton,  who  was  then  in  charge 
of  the  Duke  of  Devonshire's  superb  grounds  at  Chatsworth. 
Why  not  try  glass  and  iron  ?  he  asked  himself  Why  not 
build  a  palace  of  glass  and  iron  large  enough  to  cover  all 
the  intended  contents  of  the  Exhibition,  and  which  should 
be  at  once  light,  beautiful,  and  cheap?  Mr.  Paxton  sketch- 
ed out  his  plan  hastily,  and  the  idea  was  eagerly  accepted 
by  the  Royal  Commissioners.  He  made  many  improve- 
ments afterward  in  his  design ;  but  the  palace  of  glass  and 
iron  arose  within  the  specified  time  on  the  green  turf  of 
Hyde  Park.  The  idea  so  happily  hit  upon  was  serviceable 
in  more  ways  than  one  to  the  success  of  the  Exhibition.  It 
made  the  building  itself  as  much  an  object  of  curiosity  and 
wonder  as  the  collections  under  its  crystal  roof.  Of  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  who  came  to  the  Exhibition,  a  good- 
ly proportion  were  drawn  to  Hyde  Park  rather  by  a  wish  to 
see  Paxton's  palace  of  glass  than  all  the  wonders  of  indus- 
trial and  plastic  art  that  it  enclosed.  Indeed,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston,  writing  to  Lord  Normanby  on  the  day  after  the  open- 
ing of  the  Exhibition,  said  :  "The  building  itself  is  far  more 
worth  seeing  than  anything  in  it,  though  many  of  its  con- 
tents are  worthy  of  admiration."  Perhaps  the  glass  build- 
ing was  like  the  Exhibition  project  itself  in  one  respect.  It 
did  not  bring  about  the  involution  which  it  was  confidently 
expected  to  create.  Glass  and  iron  have  not  superseded 
brick  and  stone,  any  more  than  competitions  of  peaceful  in- 
dustry have  banished  arbitrament  by  war.  But  the  build- 
ing, like  the  Exhibition  itself,  fulfilled  admirably  its  more 
modest  and  immediate  purpose,  and  was  in  that  way  a  com- 
plete success.  The  structure  of  glass  is,  indeed,  in  every 
mind  inseparably  associated  with  the  event  and  the  year. 

The  Queen  herself  has  written  a  very  interesting  account 
of  the  success  of  the  opening  day.     Her  description  is  inter- 


368  A'  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

estiug  as  an  expression  of  the  feelings  of  the  writer,  the 
sense  of  profound  relief  and  rapture,  as  well  as  for  the  sake 
of  the  picture  it  gives  of  the  ceremonial  itself.  The  enthusi- 
asm of  the  wife  over  the  complete  success  of  the  project  on 
which  her  husband  had  set  his  heart  and  staked  his  name  is 
simple  and  touching.  If  the  importance  of  the  undertaking 
and  the  amount  of  fame  it  was  to  bring  to  its  author  may 
seem  a  little  overdone,  not  many  readers  will  complain  of  the 
womanly  and  wifely  feeling  which  could  not  be  denied  such 
fervent  expression.  "The  great  event,"  wrote  the  Queen, 
"has  taken  place — a  complete  and  beautiful  triumph — a  glo- 
rious and  touching  sight,  one  which  I  shall  ever  be  proud  of 
for  my  beloved  Albert  and  my  country.  .  .  .  The  park  pre- 
sented a  wonderful  spectacle — crowds  streaming  through  it, 
carriages  and  troops  passing,  quite  like  the  Coronation-day, 
and  for  me  the  same  anxiety — no,  much  greater  anxiety,  on 
account  of  my  beloved  Albert.  The  day  was  bright,  and 
all  bustle  and  excitement.  .  .  .  The  Green  Park  and  Hyde 
Park  were  one  densely  crowded  mass  of  human  beings,  in 
the  highest  good -humor,  and  most  enthusiastic.  I  never 
saw  Hyde  Park  look  as  it  did — as  far  as  the  eye  could 
reach.  A  little  rain  fell  just  as  we  started,  but  before  we 
came  near  the  Crystal  Palace  the  sun  shone  and  gleamed 
upon  the  gigantic  edifice,  upon  which  the  flags  of  all  nations 
were  floating.  .  .  .  The  glimpse  of  the  transept  through  the 
iron  gates,  the  waving  palms,  flowers,  statues,  myriads  of 
people  filling  the  galleries  and  se'ats  around,  with  the  flour- 
ish of  trumpets  as  we  entered,  gave  us  a  sensation  which  I 
can  never  forget,  and  I  felt  much  moved.  .  .  .  .The  sight  as 
we  came  to  the  middle  was  magical — so  vast,  so  glorious, 
so  touching — one  felt,  as  so  many  did  whom  I  have  since 
spoken  to,  filled  with  devotion — more  so  than  by  any  ser- 
vice I  have  ever  heard.  The  tremendous  cheers,  the  joy 
expressed  in  every  face,  the  immensity  of  the  building,  the 
mixture  of  palms,  flowers,  trees,  statues,  fountains;  the  or- 
gan (with  two  hundred  instruments  and  six  hundred  voices, 
which  sounded  like  nothing),  and  my  beloved  husband  the 
author  of  this  peace  festival,  which  united  the  industry  of 
all  nations  of  the  earth — all  this  was  moving  indeed,  and  it 

O '  7 

was  and  is  a  day  to  live  forever.  God  bless  my  dearest  Al- 
bert !  God  bless  my  dearest  country,  which  has  shown  it- 


THE   EXHIBITION   IN   HYDE   PAKK.  369 

self  so  great  to-day  !     One  felt  so  grateful  to  the  great  God, 
who  seemed  to  pervade  all  and  to  bless  all !" 

The  success  of  the  opening  day  was,  indeed,  undoubted. 
There  were  nearly  thirty  thousand  people  gathered  together 
within  the  building,  and  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  million 
of  persons  lined  the  way  between  the  Exhibition  and  Buck- 
ingham Palace ;  and  yet  no  accident  whatever  occurred, 
nor  had  the  police  any  trouble  imposed  on  them  by  the 
conduct  of  anybody  in  the  crowd.  "  It  was  impossible," 
wrote  Lord  Palmerston,  "  for  the  invited  guests  of  a  lady's 
drawing-room  to  have  conducted  themselves  with  more  per- 
fect propriety  than  did  this  sea  of  human  beings."  It  is 
needless  to  say  that  there  were  no  hostile  demonstrations 
by  Red  Republicans,  or  malignant  Chartists,  or  infuriated 
Irish  Catholics.  The  one  thing  which  especially  struck  for- 
eign observers,  and  to  which  many  eloquent  pens  and 
tongues  bore  witness,  was  the  orderly  conduct  of  the  peo- 
ple. Nor  did  the  subsequent  history  of  the  Exhibition  in 
any  way  belie  the  promise  of  its  opening  day.  It  continued 
to  attract  delighted  crowds  to  the  last,  and  more  than  once 
held  within  its  precincts  at  one  moment  nearly  a  hundred 
thousand  persons,  a  concourse  large  enough  to  have  made 
the  population  of  a  respectable  Continental  capital.  In  an- 
other way  the  Exhibition  proved  even  more  successful  than 
was  anticipated.  There  had  been  some  difficulty  in  raising 
money  in  the  first  instance,  and  it  was  thought  something 
of  a  patriotic  risk  when  a  few  spirited  citizens  combined  to 
secure  the  accomplishment  of  the  undertaking  by  means  of 
a  guarantee  fund.  But  the  guarantee  fund  became  in  the 
end  merely  one  of  the  forms  and  ceremonials  of  the  Exhibi- 
tion ;  for  the  undertaking  not  only  covered  its  expenses,  but 
left  a  huge  sum  of  money  in  the  hands  of  the  Royal  Com- 
missioners. The  Exhibition  was  closed  by  Prince  Albert 
on  October  15th.  That,  at  least,  may  be  described  as  the 
closing  day,  for  it  was  then  that  the  awards  of  prizes  were 
made  known  in  presence  of  the  Prince  and  a  large  concourse 
of  people.  The  Exhibition  itself  had  actually  been  closed 
to  the  general  public  on  the  eleventh  of  the  month.  It  has 
been  imitated  again  and  again.  It  was  followed  by  an 
exhibition  in  Dublin  ;  an  exhibition  of  the  paintings  and 
sculptures  of  all  nations  in  Manchester ;  three  great  exhibi- 

16* 


370  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

tions  in  Paris ;  the  International  Exhibition  in  Kensington 
in  1862 — the  enterprise  too  of  Prince  Albert,  although  not 
destined  to  have  his  presence  at  its  opening ;  an  exhibition 
at  Vienna ;  one  in  Philadelphia ;  and  various  others.  Where 
all  nations  seem  to  have  agreed  to  pay  Prince  Albert's  en- 
terprise the  compliment  of  imitation,  it  seems  superfluous  to 
say  that  it  was  a  success.  Time  has  so  toned  down  our  ex- 
pectations in  regard  to  these  enterprises,  that  no  occasion 
now  arises  for  the  feeling  of  disappointment  which  was  long 
associated  in  the  minds  of  once-sanguine  persons  witli  the 
Crystal  Palace  of  Hyde  Park.  We  look  on  such  exhibi- 
tions now  as  useful  agencies  in  the  work  of  industrial  de- 
velopment, and  in  promoting  the  intercourse  of  peoples,  and 
thus  co-operating  with  various  other  influences  in  the  gen- 
eral business  of  civilization.  But  the  impressions  produced 
by  the  Hyde  Park  Exhibition  were  unique.  It  was  the  first 
thing  of  the  kind  ;  the  gathering  of  peoples  it  brought  to- 
gether was  as  new,  odd,  and  interesting  as  the  glass  build- 
ing in  which  the  industry  of  the  world  was  displayed.  For 
the  first  time  in  their  lives  Londoners  saw  the  ordinary  as- 
pect of  London  distinctly  modified  and  changed  by  the  in- 
cursion of  foreigners  who  came  to  take  part  in  or  to  look  at 
our  Exhibition.  London  seemed  to  be  playing  at  holiday 
in  a  strange  carnival  sort  of  way  during  the  time  the  Ex- 
hibition was  open.  The  Hyde  Park  enterprise  bequeathed 
nothing  very  tangible  or  distinct  to  the  world,  except  in- 
deed the  palace  which,  built  out  of  its  fabric,  not  its  ruins, 
so  gracefully  ornaments  one  of  the  soft  hills  of  Syclenham. 
But  the  memory  of  the  Exhibition  itself  is  very  distinct 
with  all  who  saw  it.  None  of  its  followers  were  exactly 
like  it,  or  could  take  its  place  in  the  recollection  of  those 
who  were  its  contemporaries.  In  a  year  made  memorable 
by  many  political  events  of  the  greatest  importance,  of  dis- 
turbed and  tempestuous  politics  abroad  and  at  home,  of  the 
deaths  of  many  illustrious  men  and  the  failure  of  many 
splendid  hopes,  the  Exhibition  in  Hyde  Park  still  holds  its 
place  in  memory — not  for  what  it  brought  or  accomplished, 
but  simply  for  itself,  its  surroundings,  and  its  house  of  glass. 


PALMERSTON.  371 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

PALMEKSTON. 

THE  death  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  left  Lord  Palmerston 
the  most  prominent,  if  not  actually  the  most  influential, 
among  the  statesmen  of  England.  Palmerston's  was  a  stren- 

o  o 

uous,  self-asserting  character.  He  loved,  whenever  he  had 
an  opportunity,  to  make  a  stroke,  as  he  frequently  put  it 
himself,  "  off  his  own  bat."  He  had  given  himself  up  to  the 
study  of  foreign  affairs  as  no  minister  of  his  time  had  done. 
He  had  a  peculiar  capacity  for  understanding  foreign  poli- 
tics and  people  as  well  as  foreign  languages,  and  he  had 
come  somewhat  to  pique  himself  upon  his  knowledge.  As 
Bacon  said  that  he  had  taken  all  learning  for  his  province, 
Palmerston  seemed  to  have  made  up  his  mind  that  he  had 
taken  all  European  affairs  for  his  province.  His  sympathies 
were  markedly  liberal.  As  opinions  went  then,  they  might 
have  been  considered  among  statesmen  almost  revolutiona- 
ry;  for  the  Conservative  of  our  day  is  to  the  full  as  liberal 
as  the  average  Liberal  of  1848  and  1850.  In  all  the  popular 
movements  going  on  throughout  the  Continent,  Palmerston's 
sympathies  were  generally  with  the  peoples  and  against  the 
governments ;  while  he  had,  on  the  other  hand,  a  very  strong 
contempt,  which  he  took  no  pains  to  conceal,  even  for  the 
very  best  class  of  the  Continental  demagogue.  It  was  not, 
however,  in  his  sympathies  that  Palmerston  differed  from 
most  of  his  colleagues.  He  was  not  more  liberal  even  in 
his  views  of  foreign  affairs  than  Lord  John  Russell;  he  was 
probably  not  so  consistently  and  on  principle  a  supporter  of 
free  and  popular  institutions.  But  Lord  Palmerston's  en- 
ergetic, heedless  temperament,  his  exuberant  animal  spirits, 
and  his  profound  confidence  in  himself  and  his  opinions, 
made  him  much  more  liberal  and  spontaneous  in  his  ex- 
pressions of  sympathy  than  a  man  of  Russell's  colder  nature 
could  well  have  been.  Palmerston  seized  a  conclusion  at 
once,  and  hardly  ever  departed  from  it.  He  never  seemed  to 


372  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

care  who  knew  what  he  thought  on  any  subject.  He  had  a 
contempt  for  men  of  more  deliberate  temper,  and  often  spoke 
and  wrote  as  if  he  thought  a  man  slow  in  forming  an  opinion 
must  needs  be  a  dull  man,  not  to  say  a  fool.  All  opinions 
not  his  own  he  held  in  good-humored  scorn.  In  some  of  his 
letters  we  find  him  writing  of  men  of  the  most  undoubted 
genius  and  wisdom,  whose  views  have  since  stood  all  the 
test  of  time  and  trial,  as  if  they  were  mere  blockheads  for 
whom  no  practical  man  could  feel  the  slightest  respect.  It 
would  be  almost  superfluous  to  say,  in  describing  a  man  of 
such  a  nature,  that  Lord  Palmerston  sometimes  fancied  he 
saw  great  wisdom  and  force  of  character  in  men  for  whom 
neither  then  nor  since  did  the  world  in  general  show  much 
regard.  As  with  a  man,  so  with  a  cause.  Lord  Palmerston 
was,  to  all  appearance,  capricious  in  his  sympathies.  Calmer 
and  more  earnest  minds  were  sometimes  offended  at  what 
seemed  a  lack  of  deep-seated  principle  in  his  mind  and  his 
policy,  even  when  it  happened  that  he  and  they  were  in  ac- 
cord as  to  the  course  that  ought  to  be  pursued.  His  levi- 
ty often  shocked  them :  his  blunt,  brusque  ways  of  speaking 
and  writing  sometimes  gave  downright  offence. 

In  his  later  years  Lord  Palmerston's  manner  in  Parliament 
and  out  of  it  had  greatly  mellowed  and  softened  and  grown 
more  genial.  He  retained  all  the  good  spirits  and  the  ready, 
easy,  marvellously  telling  humor ;  but  he  had  grown  more 
considerate  of  the  feelings  of  opponents  in  debate,  and  he 
allowed  his  genuine  kindness  of  heart  a  freer  influence  upon 
his  mode  of  speech.  He  had  grown  to  prefer,  on  the  whole, 
his  friend,  or  even  his  honorable  opponent,  to  his  joke.  They 
who  only  remember  Palmerston  in  his  very  later  years  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  who  can  only  recall  to  memory 
that  bright,  racy  humor  which  never  offended,  will  perhaps 
find  it  hard  to  understand  how  many  enemies  he  made  for 
himself  at  an  earlier  period  by  the  levity  and  flippancy  of 
his  manner.  Many  grave  statesmen  thought  that  the  levity 
and  flippancy  were  far  less  dangerous,  even  when  employed 
in  irritating  his  adversaries  in  the  House  of  Commons,  than 
when  exercised  in  badgering  foreign  ministers  and  their  gov- 
ernments and  sovereigns.  Lord  Palmerston  was  unsparing 
in  his  lectures  to  foi'eign  States.  He  was  always  admonish- 
ing them  that  they  ought  to  lose  no  time  in  at  once  adopting 


PALMERSTON.  373 

the  principles  of  government  which  prevailed  in  England. 
He  not  uncommonly  put  his  admonitions  in  the  tone  of  one 
who  meant  to  say:  "If  you  don't  take  my  advice  you  will 
be  ruined,  and  your  ruin  will  serve  you  right  for  being  such 
fools."  While,  therefore,  he  was  a  Conservative  in  home 
politics,  and  never  even  professed  the  slightest  personal  in- 
terest in  any  projects  of  political  reform  in  England,  he  got 
the  credit  all  over  the  Continent  of  being  a  supporter,  pro- 
moter, and  patron  of  all  manner  of  revolutionary  movements, 
and  a  disturber  of  the  relations  between  subjects  and  their 
sovereigns. 

Lord  Palmerston  was  not  inconsistent  in  thus  being  a  Con- 
servative at  home  and  something  like  a  revolutionary  abroad. 
He  was  quite  satisfied  with  the  state  of  things  in  England. 
He  was  convinced  that  when  a  people  had  got  a  well-limited 
suiFrage  and  a  respectable  House  of  Commons  elected  by 
open  vote,  a  House  of  Lords,  and  a  constitutional  Sovereign, 
they  had  got  all  that,  in  a  political  sense,  man  has  to  hope 
for.  Pie  was  not  a  far-seeing  man,  nor  a  man  who  much 
troubled  himself  about  what  a  certain  class  of  writers  and 
thinkers  are  fond  of  calling  "problems  of  life."  It  did  not 
occur  to  him  to  think  that  as  a  matter  of  absolute  necessity 
the  very  reforms  we  enjoy  in  one  day  are  only  putting  us 
into  a  mental  condition  to  aspire  after  and  see  the  occasion 
for  further  reforms  as  the  days  go  on.  But  he  clearly  saw 
that  most  Continental  countries  were  governed  on  a  system 
which  was  not  only  worn  out  and  decaying,  but  which  was 
the  source  of  great  practical  and  personal  evils  to  their  in- 
habitants. He  desired,  therefore,  for  every  country  a  politi- 
cal system  like  that  of  Great  Britain,  and  neither  for  Great 
Britain  nor  for  any  other  country  did  he  desire  anything 
more.  He  was,  accordingly,  looked  upon  by  Continental 
ministers  as  a  patron  of  revolution,  and  by  English  Radicals 
as  the  steady  enerny  of  political  reform.  Both  were  right 
from  their  own  point  of  view.  The  familiar  saying  among 
Continental  Conservatives  was  expressed  in  the  well-known 
German  lines,  which  affirm  that  "If  the  devil  had  a  son,  he 
must  be  surely  Palmerston."  On  the  other  hand,  the  Eng- 
lish Radical  party  regarded  him  as  the  most  formidable  ene- 
my they  had.  Mr.  Cobden  deliberately  declared  him  to  be 
the  worst  minister  that  had  ever  governed  England.  At  a 


374:  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

later  period,  when  Lord  Palmerston  invited  Cobden  to  take 
office  under  him,  Cobden  referred  to  what  he  had  said  of 
Palmerston,  and  gave  this  as  a  reason  to  show  the  impossi- 
bility of  his  serving  such  a  chief.  The  good-natured  states- 
man only  smiled,  and  observed  that  another  public  man  who 
had  just  joined  his  Administration  had  often  said  things  as 
hai'd  of  him  in  other  days.  "Yes,"  answered  Cobden,  quiet- 
ly, "  but  I  meant  what  I  said." 

Palmerston,  therefore,  had  many  enemies  among  Europe- 
an statesmen.  It  is  now  certain  that  the  Queen  frequent- 
ly winced  under  the  expressions  of  ill-feeling  which  were 
brought  to  her  ears  as  affecting  England,  and,  as  she  sup- 
posed, herself,  and  which  she  believed  to  have  been  drawn 
on  her  by  the  inconsiderate  and  impulsive  conduct  of  Palm- 
erston. The  Prince  Consort,  on  whose  advice  the  Queen 
very  naturally  relied,  was  a  man  of  singularly  calm  and  ear- 
nest nature.  He  liked  to  form  his  opinions  deliberately  and 
slowly,  and  disliked  expressing  any  opinion  until  his  mind 
was  well  made  up.  Lord  Palmerston,  Avhen  Secretary  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  was  much  in  the  habit  of  writing  and  an- 
swering despatches  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  and  without 
consulting  either  the  Queen  or  his  colleagues.  Palmerston 
complained  of  the  long  delays  which  took  place  on  several 
occasions  when,  in  matters  of  urgent  importance,  he  waited 
to  submit  despatches  to  the  Queen  before  sending  them  off. 
He  was  of  opinion  that  during  the  memorable  controversy 
on  the  Spanish  marriages  the  interests  of  England  were  once 
in  danger  of  being  compromised  by  the  delay  thus  forced 
upon  him.  He  contended,  too,  that  where  the  general  policy 
of  a  state  was  clearly  marked  out  and  well  known,  it  would 
have  been  idle  to  insist  that  a  Foreign  Secretary  capable  of 
performing  the  duties  of  his  office  should  wait  to  submit  for 
the  inspection  and  approval  of  the  Sovereign  and  his  col- 
leagues every  scrap  of  paper  he  wrote  on  before  it  was  al- 
lowed to  leave  England.  If  such  precautions  were  needful, 
Lord  Palmerston  contended,  it  could  only  be  because  the 
person  holding  the  office  of  Foreign  Secretary  was  unfit  for 
his  post ;  and  he  ought,  therefore,  to  be  dismissed,  and  some 
better  qualified  man  put  in  his  place.  Of  course  there  is 
some  obvious  justice  in  this  view  of  the  case.  It  would  per- 
haps have  been  unreasonable  to  expect  that,  at  a  time  when 


PALMERSTON.  375 

the  business  of  the  Foreign  Office  had  suddenly  swelled  to 
unprecedented  magnitude,  the  same  rules  and  formalities 
could  be  kept  up  which  had  suited  slower  and  less  busy 
days.  But  the  complaint  made  by  the  Queen  was  not  that 
Palmerston  failed  to  consult  her  on  every  detail,  and  to  sub- 
mit every  line  relating  to  the  organization  of  the  Foreign 
Office  for  her  approval  before  he  sent  it  off.  The  complaint 
was  clear,  and  full  of  matter  for  very  grave  consideration. 
The  Queen  complained  that  on  matters  concerning  the  act- 
ual policy  of  the  State  Palmerston  was  in  the  habit  of  acting 
on  his  own  independent  judgment  and  authority;  that  she 
found  herself  more  than  once  thus  pledged  to  a  course  of 
policy  which  she  had  not  had  an  opportunity  of  considering, 
and  would  not  have  approved  if  she  had  had  such  an  oppor- 
tunity; and  that  she  hardly  ever  found  any  question  abso- 
lutely intact  and  uncompromised  when  it  was  submitted  to 
her  judgment.  The  complaint  was  justified  in  many  cases. 
Lord  Palmerston  frequently  acted  in  a  manner  which  almost 
made  it  seem  as  if  he  were  purposely  ignoring  the  authority 
of  the  Sovereign.  In  part  this  came  from  the  natural  impa- 
tience of  a  quick  man  confident  in  his  own  knowledge  of  a 
subject,  and  chafing  at  any  delay  which  he  thought  unnec- 
essary and  merely  formal.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  avoid  a  sus- 
picion that  Lord  Palrnerston's  rapidity  of  action  sometimes 
had  a  different  explanation.  Two  impressions  seem  to  have 
had  a  place  deeply  down  in  the  mind  of  the  Foreign  Secre- 
tary. He  appears  to  have  felt  sure  that,  roughly  speaking, 
the  s}'mpathies  of  the  English  people  were  with  the  Conti- 
nental movements  against  the  sovereigns,  and  that  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  English  court  were  with  the  sovereigns  against 
the  popular  movements.  In  the  first  belief  he  was  undoubt- 
edly right.  In  the  second  he  was  probably  right.  It  is  not 
likely  that  a  man  of  Prince  Albert's  peculiar  turn  of  mind 
could  have  admitted  much  sympathy  with  revolution  against 
constituted  authority  of  any  kind.  Even  his  Liberalism,  un- 
doubtedly a  deep  and  genuine  conviction,  did  not  lead  him 
to  make  much  allowance  for  any  disturbing  impulses.  His 
orderly  intellectual  nature,  with  little  of  fire  or  passion  in  it, 
was  prone  to  estimate  everything  by  the  manner  in  which 
it  stood  the  test  of  logical  argument.  He  could  understand 
arguing  against  a  bad  system  better  than  he  could  under- 


376  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

stand  taking  the  risk  of  making  things  worse  by  resisting 
it.  Some  of  the  published  memoranda  or  other  writings  of 
Prince  Albert  are  full  of  a  curious  interest  as  showing  the 

o 

way  in  which  a  calm,  intellectual,  and  earnest  man  could  ap- 
proach some  of  the  burning  questions  of  the  day  with  the 
belief  apparently  that  the  great  antagonisms  of  systems  and 
of  opposing  national  forces  could  be  argued  into  moderation 
and  persuaded  into  compromise.  In  Prince  Albert  there 
were  two  tendencies  counteracting  each  other.  His  natural 
sympathies  were  manifestly  with  the  authority  of  thrones. 
His  education  taught  him  that  thrones  can  only  exist  by 
virtue  of  their  occupants  recognizing  the  fact  that  they  do 
not  exist  of  their  own  authority,  and  taking  care  that  they 
do  not  became  unsuited  to  the  time.  The  influence  of  Prince 
Albert  would,  therefore,  be  something  very  different  from  the 
impulses  and  desires  of  Lord  Palmerston.  It  is  hardly  to  be 
doubted  that  Palmerston  sometimes /vcted  upon  this  convic- 
tion. He  thought  he  understood  better  than  others  not  only 
the  tendencies  of  events  in  foreign  politics,  but  also  the  ten- 
dencies of  English  public  opinion  with  regard  to  them.  He 
well  knew  that  so  long  as  he  had  public  opinion  with  him, 
no  influence  could  long  prevail  against  him.  His  knowledge 
of  English  public  opinion  was  something  like  an  instinct. 
It  could  always  be  trusted.  It  had,  indeed,  no  far  reach. 
Lord  Palmerston  never  could  be  relied  upon  for  a  judgment 
as  to  the  possible  changes  of  a  generation,  or  even  a  few 
years.  But  he  was  an  almost  infallible  guide  as  to  what  a 
majority  of  the  English  people  were  likely  to  say  if  asked 
at  the  particular  moment  when  any  question  was  under  dis- 
pute. Palmerston  never  really  guided,  but  always  follow- 
ed, the  English  public,  even  in  foreign  affairs.  He  was,  it 
seems  almost  needless  to  say,  an  incompai*ably  better  judge 
of  the  direction  English  sentiment  was  likely  to  take  than 
the  most  acute  foreigner  put  in  such  a  place  as  Prince  Al- 
bert's could  possibly  hope  to  be.  It  may  be  assumed,  then, 
that  some  at  least  of  Lord  Palmerston's  actions  were  dictated 
by  the  conviction  that  he  had  the  general  force  of  that  sen- 
timent to  sustain  him  in  case  his  mode  of  conducting  the 
business  of  the  Foreign  Office  should  ever  be  called  into 
account. 

A  time  came  when  it  was  called  into  account.    The  Queen 


PALMERSTON.  377 

and  the  Prince  had  long  chafed  under  Lord  Palmerston's 
cavalier  way  of  doing  business.  So  far  back  as  1849  her 
Majesty  had  felt  obliged  to  draw  the  attention  of  the  For- 
eign Secretary  to  the  fact  that  his  office  was  constitutional- 
ly under  the  control  of  the  Prime-minister,  and  that  the  de- 
spatches to  be  submitted  for  her  approval  should,  therefore, 
pass  through  the  hands  of  Lord  John  Russell.  Lord  John 
Russell  approved  of  this  arrangement,  only  suggesting — and 
the  suggestion  is  of  some  moment  in  considering  the  defence 
of  his  conduct  afterward  made  by  Lord  Palmerston — that 
every  facility  should  be  given  for  the  transaction  of  business 
by  the  Queen's  attending  to  the  draft  despatches  as  soon  as 
possible  after  their  arrival.  The  Queen  accepted  the  sug- 
gestion good-humoredly,  only  pleading  that  she  should  "not 
be  pressed  for  an  answer  within  a  few  minutes,  as  is  done 
now  sometimes."  One  can  see  tolerably  well  what  a  part 
of  the  difficulty  was,  even  from  these  slight  hints.  Lord 
Palmerston  was  rapid  in  forming  his  judgments,  as  in  all  his 
proceedings,  and  when  once  he  had  made  up  his  mind  was 
impatient  of  any  delay  which  seemed  to  him  superfluous. 
Prince  Albert  was  slow,  deliberate,  reflective,  and  methodi- 
cal. Lord  Palmerston  was  always  sure  he  was  right  in  every 
judgment  he  formed,  even  if  it  were  adopted  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment ;  Prince  Albert  loved  reconsideration,  and  was 
open  to  new  argument  and  late  conviction.  However,  the 
difficulty  was  got  over  in  1849.  Lord  Palmerston  agreed  to 
every  suggestion,  and  for  the  time  all  seemed  likely  to  go 
smoothly.  It  was  only  for  the  time.  The  Queen  soon  be- 
lieved she  had  reason  to  complain  that  the  new  arrangement 
was  not  carried  out.  Things  were  going  on,  she  thought, 
in  just  the  old  way.  Lord  Palmerston  dealt  as  before  with 
foreign  courts  according  to  what  seemed  best  to  him  at  the 
moment ;  and  his  Sovereign  and  his  colleagues  often  only 
knew  of  some  important  despatch  or  instruction  when  the 
thing  was  done,  and  could  not  be  conveniently  or  becoming- 
ly undone.  The  Prince,  at  her  Majesty's  request,  wrote  to 
Lord  John  Russell,  complaining  strongly  of  the  conduct  of 
Lord  Palmerston.  The  letter  declared  that  Lord  Palmerston 
had  failed  in  his  duty  toward  her,  "and  not  from  oversight 
or  negligence,  but  upon  principle,  and  with  astonishing  per- 
tinacity, against  every  eftbrt  of  the  Queen.  Besides  which, 


378  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

Lord  Palmerston  does  not  scruple  to  let  it  appear  in  public 
as  if  the  Sovereign's  negligence  in  attending  to  the  papers 
sent  to  her  caused  delay  and  annoyance."  Even  before  this 
it  seems  that  the  Queen  had  drawn  up  a  memorandum  to  lay 
down  in  clear  and  severe  language  the  exact  rules  by  which 
the  Foreign  Secretary  must  be  bound  in  his  dealings  with 
her.  The  memorandum  was  not  used  at  that  time,  as  it  was 
thought  that  the  remonstrances  of  the  Sovereign  and  the 

o  O 

Prime-minister  alike  could  hardly  fail  to  have  some  effect  on 
the  Foreign  Secretary.  This  time,  however,  the  Queen  ap- 
pears to  have  felt  that  she  could  no  longer  refrain ;  and, 
accordingly,  the  following  important  memorandum  was  ad- 
dressed by  her  Majesty  to  the  Prime -minister.  It  is  well 
worth  quoting  in  full,  partly  because  it  became  a  subject  of 
much  interest  and  controversy  afterward,  and  partly  because 
of  the  tone  of  peculiar  sternness,  rare  indeed  from  a  sover- 
eign to  a  minister  in  our  times,  in  which  its  instructions  are 
conveyed. 

Osborne,  August  12th,  1850. 

With  reference  to  the  conversation  about  Lord  Palmerston  which  the 
Queen  had  with  Lord  John  Russell  the  other  day,  and  Lord  Palmerston 's 
disavowal  that  he  ever  intended  any  disrespect  to  her  by  the  various  neglects 
of  which  she  has  had  so  long  and  so  often  to  complain,  she  thinks  it  right,  in 
order  to  prevent  any  mistake  for  the  future,  to  explain  what  it  is  she  expects 
from  the  Foreign  Secretary. 

She  requires : 

First.  That  he  will  distinctly  state  what  he  proposes  to  do  jn  a  given  case, 
in  order  that  the  Queen  may  know  as  distinctly  to  what  she  has  given  her 
royal  sanction. 

Second.  Having  once  given  her  sanction  to  a  measure,  that  it  be  not  arbi- 
trarily altered  or  modified  by  the  minister ;  such  an  act  she  must  consider 
as  failure  in  sincerity  toward  the  Crown,  and  justly  to  be  visited  by  the  exer- 
cise of  her  constitutional  right  of  dismissing  that  minister.  She  expects  to 
be  kept  informed  of  what  passes  between  him  and  the  foreign  ministers,  be- 
fore important  decisions  are  taken  based  upon  that  intercourse ;  to  receive 
the  foreign  despatches  in  good  time,  and  to  have  the  drafts  for  her  approval 
sent  to  her  in  sufficient  time  to  make  herself  acquainted  with  their  contents 
before  they  must  be  sent  off.  The  Queen  thinks  it  best  that  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell should  show  this  letter  to  Lord  Palmerston. 

The  tone  of  the  memorandum  was  severe,  but  there  was 
nothing  unreasonable  in  its  stipulations.  On  the  contrary, 
it  simply  prescribed  what  every  one  might  have  supposed 
to  be  the  elementary  conditions  on  which  the  duties  of  a 


PALMERSTON.  379 

sovereign  and  a  foreign  minister  can  alone  be  satisfactorily 
carried  on.  Custom  as  well  as  obvious  convenience  demand- 
ed such  conditions.  The  Duke  of  Wellington  declared  that 
when  he  was  Prime-minister  no  despatch  left  the  Foreign 
Office  without  his  seeing  it.  No  sovereign,  one  would  think, 
could  consent  to  the  responsibility  of  rule  on  any  other 
terms.  We  have,  perhaps,  got  into  the  habit  of  thinking, 
or  at  least  of  saying,  that  the  sovereign  of  a  constitutional 
country  only  rules  through  the  ministers.  But  it  would  be 
a  gi'eat  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  sovereign  has  no  consti- 
tutional functions  whatever  provided  by  our  system  of  gov- 
ernment, and  that  the  sole  duty  of  a  monarch  is  to  make  a 
figure  in  certain  state  pageantry.  It  has  sometimes  been 
said  that  the  sovereign  in  a  country  like  England  is  only  the 
signet-ring  of  the  nation.  If  this  were  true,  it  might  be  ask- 
ed with  unanswerable  force  why  a  veritable  signet-ring  cost- 
ing a  few  pounds,  and  never  requiring  to  be  renewed,  would 
not  serve  all  purposes  quite  as  well,  and  save  expense.  But 
the  position  of  the  sovereign  is  not  one  of  meaningless  in- 
activity. The  sovereign  has  a  very  distinct  and  practical 
office  to  fulfil  in  a  constitutional  country.  The  monarch  in 
England  is  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  State,  specially  raised 
above  party  and  passion  and  change  in  order  to  be  able  to 
look  with  a  clearer  eye  to  all  that  concerns  the  interests  of 
the  nation.  Our  constitutional  system  grows  and  develops 
itself  year  after  year  as  our  requirements  and  conditions 
change ;  and  the  position  of  the  sovereign,  like  everything 
else,  has  undergone  some  modification.  It  is  settled  now 
beyond  dispute  that  the  sovereign  is  not  to  dismiss  ministers, 
or  a  minister,  simply  from  personal  inclination  or  conviction, 
as  until  a  very  recent  day  it  was  the  right  and  the  habit  of 
English  monarchs  to  do.  The  sovereign  now  retains,  in  vir- 
tue of  usage  having  almost  the  force  of  constitutional  law, 
the  ministers  of  whom  the  House  of  Commons  approves. 
But  the  Crown  still  has  the  right,  in  case  of  extreme  need, 
of  dismissing  any  minister  who  actually  fails  to  do  his  duty. 
The  sovereign  is  always  supposed  to  understand  the  business 
of  the  State,  to  consider  its  affairs,  and  to  oifer  an  opinion, 
and  enforce  it  by  argument,  on  any  question  submitted  by 
the  ministers.  When  the  ministers  find  that  they  cannot 
allow  their  judgment  to  bend  to  that  of  the  sovereign,  then 


380  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

indeed  the  sovereign  gives  way  or  the  ministers  resign.  In 
all  ordinary  cases  the  sovereign  gives  way.  But  it  was 
never  intended  by  the  English  Constitution  that  the  minis- 
ters and  the  country  were  not  to  have  the  benefit  of  the  ad- 
vice and  the  judgment  of  a  magistrate  who  is  purposely 
placed  above  all  the  excitements  and  temptations  of  party, 
its  triumphs  and  its  reverses,  and  who  is  assumed,  therefore, 
to  have  no  other  motive  than  the  good  of  the  State  in  offer- 
ing an  advice.  The  sovereign  would  grossly  fail  in  public 
duty,  and  would  be  practically  disappointing  the  confidence 
of  the  nation,  who  consented  to  act  simply  as  the  puppet  of 
the; minister,  and  to  sign  mechanically  and  without  question 
every  document  he  laid  on  the  table. 

In  the  principles  which  she  laid  down,  therefore,  the 
Queen  was  strictly  right.  But  the  memorandum  was  none 
the  less  a  severe  and  a  galling  rebuke  for  the  Foreign  Sec- 
retary. We  can  imagine  with  what  emotions  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  must  have  received  it.  He  was  a  proud,  self-confident 
man ;  and  it  came  on  him  just  in  the  moment  of  his  great- 
est triumph.  Never  before,  never  since,  did  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  win  so  signal  and  so  splendid  a  victory  as  that  which 
he  had  extorted  by  the  sheer  force  of  his  eloquence  and  his 
genius  from  a  reluctant  House  of  Commons  in  the  Don  Pa- 
cifico  debate.  Never,  probably,  in  our  Parliamentary  his- 
tory did  a  man  of  years  so  advanced  accomplish  such  a  feat 
of  eloquence,  argument,  and  persuasion  as  he  had  achieved. 
He  stood  up  before  the  world  the  foremost  English  states- 
man of  the  day.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  how  deeply  he  must 
have  felt  the  rebuke  conveyed  in  the  memorandum  of  the 
Queen.  We  know,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  from  what  lie  him- 
self afterward  said,  that  he  did  feel  it  bitterly.  But  he  kept 
down  his-  feelings.  Whether  he  was  right  or  wrong  in  the 
matter  of  dispute,  he  undoubtedly  showed  admirable  self- 
control  and  good-temper  in  his  manner  of  receiving  the  rep- 
rimand. He  wrote  a  friendly  and  good-humored  letter  to 
Lord  John  Russell,  saying,  "I  have  taken  a  copy  of  this 
memorandum  of  the  Queen,  and  will  not  fail  to  attend  to 
the  directions  which  it  contains."  The  letter  then  gave  a 
few  lines  of  explanation  about  the  manner  in  which  delays 
had  arisen  in  the  sending  of  despatches  to  the  Queen,  but 
promising  to  return  to  the  old  practice,  and  expressing  a 


PALMERSTOK  381 

hope  that  if  the  return  required  an  additional  clerk  or  two, 
the  Treasury  would  be  liberal  in  allowing  him  that  assist- 
ance. Nothing  could  be  more  easy  and  pleasant.  It  might 
have  seemed  the  ease  of  absolute  carelessness.  But  it  was 
nothing  of  the  kind.  Lord  Palmerston  had  acted  deliber- 
ately and  with  a  purpose.  He  afterward  explained  why  he 
had  not  answered  the  rebuke  by  resigning  his  office.  "  The 
paper,"  he  said,  "  was  written  in  anger  by  a  lady  as  well  as 
by  a  sovereign,  and  the  difference  between  a  lady  and  a 
man  could  riot  be  forgotten  even  in  the  case  of  the  occupant 
of  the  throne."  He  had  "  no  reason  to  suppose  that  this 
memorandum  would  ever  be  seen  by  or  be  known  to  any- 
body but  the  Queen,  John  Russell,  and  myself."  Again,  "I 
had  lately  been  the  object  of  violent  political  attack,  and 
had  gained  a  great  and  signal  victory  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons and  in  public  opinion ;  to  have  resigned  then  would 
have  been  to  have  given  the  fruits  of  victory  to  antagonists 
whom  I  had  defeated,  and  to  have  abandoned  my  political 
supporters  at  the  very  moment  when  by  their  means  I  had 
triumphed."  But  beyond  all  that,  Lord  Palmerston  said 
that  by  suddenly  resigning  "I  should  have  been  bringing 
for  decision  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion  a  personal  quarrel 
between  myself  and  my  Sovereign — a  step  which  no  sub- 
ject ought  to  take  if  he  can  possibly  avoid  it ;  for  the  result 
of  such  a  course  must  be  either  fatal  to  him  or  injurious  to 
the  country.  If  he  should  prove  to  be  in  the  wrong,  he 
would  be  irretrievably  condemned  ;  if  the  Sovereign  should 
be  proved  to  be  in  the  wrong,  the  monarchy  would  suffer." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  a  high  respect  for  the  manner 
in  which,  having  come  to  this  determination,  Lord  Palmer- 
ston at  once  acted  upon  it.  As  he  had  resolved  not  to  re- 
sent the  rebuke,  he  would  not  allow  any  gleam  of  feeling  to 
creep  into  his  letter  which  could  show  that  he  felt  any  re- 
sentment. Few  men  could  have  avoided  the  temptation  to 
throw  into  a  reply  on  such  an  occasion  something  of  the 
tone  of  the  injured,  the  unappreciated,  the  martyr,  the 
wronged  one  who  endures  much  and  will  not  complain. 
Lord  Palmerston  felt  instinctively  the  bad  taste  and  unwis- 
dom of  such  a  style  of  reply.  He  took  his  rebuke  in  the 
most  perfect  good-humor.  His  letter  must  have  surprised 
Lord  John  Russell.  Macaulay  observes  that  Warren  Has- 


382  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tings,  confident  that  he  knew  best  and  was  acting  rightly, 
endured  the  rebukes  of  the  East  India  Company  with  a 
patience  which  was  sometimes  mistaken  for  the  patience 
of  stupidity.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  when  the  Prime-min- 
ister received  Lord  Palmerston's  reply  he  may  have  mis- 
taken its  patience  for  the  patience  of  downright  levity  and 
indifference. 

Lord  Palmerston  went  a  step  farther  in  the  way  of  con- 
ciliation. He  asked  for  an  interview  with  Prince  Albert, 
and  he  explained  to  the  Prince  in  the  most  emphatic  and 
indignant  terms  that  the  accusation  against  him  of  being 
purposely  wanting  in  respect  to  the  Sovereign  was  absolute- 
ly unfounded.  "  Had  it  been  deserved,  he  ought  to  be  no 
longer  tolerated  in  society."  But  he  does  not  seem,  in  the 
course  of  the  interview,  to  have  done  much  more  than  argue 
the  point  as  to  the  propriety  and  convenience  of  the  system 
he  had  lately  been  adopting  in  the  business  of  the  Foreign 
Office. 

So  for  the  hour  the  matter  dropped.  Other  events  inter- 
fered ;  there  were  many  important  questions  of  domestic 
policy  to  be  attended  to;  and  for  some  time  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's policy  and  his  way  of  conducting  the  business  of  the 
Foreign  Office  did  not  invite  any  particular  attention.  But 
the  old  question  was  destined  to  come  up  again  in  more 
serious  form  than  before. 

The  failure  of  the  Hungarian  rebellion,  through  the  inter- 
vention of  Russia,  called  up  a  wide  and  deep  feeling  of  re- 
gret and  indignation  in  this  country.  The  English  people 
had  very  generally  sympathized  with  the  cause  of  the  Hun- 
garians, and  rejoiced  in  the  victories  which,  up  to  a  certain 
point,  the  arms  of  the  insurgents  had  won.  When  the 
Hungarians  were  put  down  at  last,  not  by  the  strength  of 
Austria,  but  by  the  intervention  of  Russia,  the  anger  of  Eng- 
lishmen in  general  found  loud -spoken  expression.  Louis 
Kossuth,  who  had  been  Dictator  of  Hungary  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  insurrection,  and  who  represented,  in  the 
English  mind  at  least,  the  cause  of  Hungary  and  her  nation- 
al independence,  came  to  England.  He  was  about  to  take 
up  his  residence,  as  he  then  intended,  in  the  United  States, 
and  on  his  way  thither  he  visited  England.  He  had  applied 
for  permission  to  pass  through  French  territory,  and  had 


PALMERSTON.  383 

been  refused  the  favor.  The  refusal  only  gave  one  ad- 
ditional reason  to  the  English  public  for  welcoming  him 
with  especial  coi'diality.  He  was  accordingly  received  at 
Southampton,  in  Birmingham* in  London,  with  an  enthusiasm 
such  as  no  foreigner  except  Garibaldi  alone  has  ever  drawn 
in  our  time  from  the  English  people.  There  was  much  in 
Kossuth  himself,  as  well  as  in  his  cause,  to  attract  the  en- 
thusiasm of  popular  assemblages.  He  had  a  strikingly 
handsome  face  and  a  stately  presence.  He  was  picturesque 
and  perhaps  even  theatric  in  his  dress  and  his  bearing.  He 
looked  like  a  picture;  all  his  attitudes  and  gestures  seemed 
as  if  they  were  meant  to  be  reproduced  by  a  painter.  He 
was  undoubtedly  one  of  the  most  eloquent  men  who  ever 
addressed  an  English  popular  audience.  In  one  of  his  im- 
prisonments Kossuth  had  studied  the  English  language, 
chiefly  from  the  pages  of  Shakspeare.  He  had  mastered  our 
tongue  as  few  foreigners  have  ever  been  able  to  do;  but 
what  he  had  mastered  was  not  the  common  colloquial  Eng- 
lish of  the  streets  and  the  drawing-rooms.  The  English  he 

o  o 

spoke  was  the  noblest  in  its  style  from  which  a  student 
could  supply  his  eloquence  :  Kossuth  spoke  the  English  of 
Shakspeare.  He  could  address  a  public  meeting  for  an  hour 
or  more  with  a  fluency  not  inferior,  seemingly,  to  that  of 
Gladstone,  with  a  measured  dignity  and  well  -  restrained 
force  that  were  not  unworthy  of  Bright,  and  in  curiously 
expressive,  stately,  powerful,  pathetic  English,  which  sound- 
ed as  if  it  belonged  to  a  higher  time  and  to  loftier  interests 
than  ours.  Viewed  as  a  mere  performance,  the  achievement 
of  Kossuth  was  unique.  It  may  well  be  imagined  what  the 
eflect  was  on  a  popular  audience,  when  such  eloquence  was 
poured  forth  in  glowing  eulogy  of  a  cause  with  which  they 
sympathized,  and  in  denunciation  of  enemies  and  principles 
they  detested.  It  was  impossible  not  to  be  impressed  by 
the  force  of  some  of  the  striking  and  dramatic  passages  in 
Kossuth's  fervid,  half-Oriental  orations.  He  stretched  out 
his  right  hand,  and  declared  that  "  the  time  was  when  I  held 
the  destinies  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg  in  the  hollow  of  that 
hand  !"  He  apostrophized  those  who  fought  and  fell  in  the 
rank-and-file  of  Hungary's  champions  as  "  unnamed  demi- 
gods." He  prefaced  a  denunciation  of  the  Papal  policy  by 
an  impassioned  lament  over  the  brief  hopes  that  the  Pope 


384  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

was  about  to  head  the  Liberal  movement  in  Italy,  and  re- 
minded his  hearers  that  "  there  was  a  time  when  the  name 
of  Pio  Nono,  coupled  with  that  of  Louis  Kossuth,  was 
thundered  in  vivas  along  the  sunny  shores  of  the  Adriatic." 
Every  appeal  was  vivid  and  dramatic  ;  every  allusion  told. 
Throughout  the  whole  there  ran  the  thread  of  one  distinct 
principle  of  international  policy  to  which  Kossuth  endeav- 
ored to  obtain  the  assent  of  the  English  people.  This  was 
the  principle  that  if  one  State  intervenes  in  the  domestic 
affairs  of  another  for  the  purpose  of  putting  down  revolu- 
tion, it  then  becomes  the  right,  and  may  even  be  the  duty, 
of  any  third  State  to  throw  in  the  weight  of  her  sword 
against  the  unjustifiable  intervention.  As  a  principle  this 
is  nothing  more  than  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  thought- 
ful Englishmen  had  advocated  before  and  have  advocated 
since.  But  in  Kossuth's  mind,  and  in  the  understanding  of 
those  who  heard  him,  it  meant  that  England  ought  to  de- 
clare war  against  Russia  or  Austria,  or  both  ;  the  former  for 
having  intervened  between  the  Emperor  of  Austria  and  the 
Hungarians,  and  the  latter  for  having  invited  and  profited 
by  the  intervention. 

The  presence  of  Kossuth  and  the  reception  lie  got  excited 
a  wild  anger  and  alarm  among  Austrian  statesmen.     The 

o  o 

Austrian  minister  was  all  sensitiveness  and  remonstrance. 
The  relations  between  this  country  and  Austria  seemed  to 
become  every  day  more  and  more  strained.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  regarded  the  anger  and  the  fears  of  Austria  with  a  con- 
tempt which  he  took  no  pains  to  conceal.  Before  the  Hun- 
garian exile  had  reached  this  country,  while  he  was  still  un- 
der the  protection  of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  and  Austria  was 
in  wild  alarm  lest  he  should  be  set  at  liberty  and  should 
come  to  England,  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to  a  British  diplo- 
matist, saying,  "What  a  childish,  silly  fear  this  is  of  Kossuth  ! 
What  great  harm  could  he  do  to  Austria  while  in  France  or 
England  ?  He  would  be  the  hero  of  half  a  dozen  dinners  in 
England,  at  which  would  be  made  speeches  not  more  violent 
than  those  which  have  been  made  on  platforms  here  within 
the  last  four  months,  and  he  would  soon  sink  into  compara- 
tive obscurity ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  so  long  as  he  is  a 
State  detenu  in  Turkey  he  is  a  martyr  and  the  object  of  nev- 
er-ceasing interest."  Lord  Palmerston  understood  thorough- 


PALMERSTON.  385 

]y  the  temper  of  his  countrymen  in  general.  The  English 
public  never  had  any  serious  notion  of  going  to  war  with 
Austria  in  obedience  to  Kossuth's  appeal.  They  sympa- 
thized generally  with  Kossuth's  cause,  or  with  the  cause 
which  they  understood  him  to  represent;  they  were  taken 
with  his  picturesque  appearance  and  his  really  wonderful  el- 
oquence ;  they  wanted  a  new  hero,  and  Kossuth  seemed  pos- 
itively cut  out  to  supply  the  want.  The  enthusiasm  cooled 
down  after  awhile,  as  was  indeed  inevitable.  The  time  was 
not  far  off  when  Kossuth  was  to  make  vain  appeals  to  al- 
most empty  halls,  and  when  the  eloquence  that  once  could 
cram  the  largest  buildings  with  excited  admirers  was  to  call 

^  o 

aloud  to  solitude.  There  came  a  time  when  Kossuth  lived 
in  England  forgotten  and  unnoticed  ;  when  his  passing  away 
from  England  was  unobserved,  as  his  presence  there  had  long 
been.  There  seems,  one  can  hardly  help  saying,  something 
cruel  in  this  way  of  suddenly  taking  up  the  representative 
of  some  foreign  cause,  the  spokesman  of  some  "  mission ;"  and 
then,  when  he  has  been  filled  with  vain  hopes,  letting  him 
drop  down  to  disappointment  and  neglect.  It  was  not,  per- 
haps, the  fault  of  the  English  people  if  Kossuth  mistook,  as 
many  another  man  in  like  circumstances  has  done,  the  mean- 
ing of  English  popular  sympathy.  The  English  crowds  who 
applauded  Kossuth  at  first  meant  nothing  more  than  general 
sympathy  with  any  hero  of  Continental  revolution,  and  per- 
sonal admiration  for  the  eloquence  of  the  man  who  addressed 
them.  But  Kossuth  did  not  thus  accept  the  homage  paid  to 
him.  No  foreigner  could  have  understood  it  in  his  place. 
Lord  Palmerston  understood  it  thoroughly,  and  knew  what 
it  meant,  and  how  long  it  would  last. 

The  time,  however,  had  not  yet  come  when  the  justice  of 
Lord  Palmerston's  words  was  to  be  established.  Kossuth 
was  the  hero  of  the  hour,  the  comet  of  the  season.  The  Aus- 
trian statesmen  were  going  on  as  if  every  word  spoken  at  a 
Kossuth  meeting  were  a  declaration  of  war  against  Austria. 
Lord  Palmerston  was  disposed  to  chuckle  over  the  anger 
thus  displayed.  "Kossuth's  reception,"  he  wrote  to  his 
brother, "  must  have  been  gall  and  wormwood  to  the  Aus- 
trians  and  to  the  absolutists  generally."  Some  of  Lord 
Palmerston's  colleagues,  however,  became  greatly  alarmed 
when  it  was  reported  that  the  Foreign  Minister  was  about 

I.— 17 


386  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

to  receive  a  visit  from  Kossuth  in  person,  to  thank  him  for 
the  sympathy  and  protection  which  England  had  accorded 
to  the  Hungarian  refugees  while  they  were  still  in  Turkey, 
and  without  which  it  is  only  too  likely  that  they  would  have 
been  handed  over  to  Austria  or  Russia.  It  was  thought  that 
for  the  Foreign  Secretary  to  receive  a  formal  visit  of  thanks 
from  Kossuth  would  be  regarded  by  Austria  as  a  recognition 
by  England  of  the  justice  of  Kossuth's  cause,  and  an  expres- 
sion of  censure  against  Austria.  If  Kossuth  were  received 
by  Lord  Palmerston,  the  Austrian  ambassador,  it  was  con- 
fidently reported,  would  leave  England.  Lord  John  Russell 
took  alarm,  and  called  a  meeting  of  the  cabinet  to  consider 
the  momentous  question.  Lord  Palmerston  reluctantly  con- 
sented to  appease  the  alarms  of  his  colleagues  by  promising 
to  avoid  an  interview  with  Kossuth. 

It  does  not  seem  to  us  that  there  was  much  dignity  in 
the  course  taken  by  the  cabinet.  Lord  Palmerston  actually 
used,  and  very  properly  used,  all  the  influence  England  could 
command  to  protect  the  Hungarian  refugees  in  Turkey.  He 
had  intimated  very  distinctly,  and  with  the  full  approval  of 
England,  that  he  would  use  still  stronger  measures  if  neces- 
sary to  protect  at  once  the  Sultan  and  the  refugees.  It  seems 
to  us  that,  having  done  this  openly,  and  compelled  Russia 
and  Austria  to  bend  to  his  urgency,  there  could  be  little 
harm  in  his  receiving  a  visit  from  one  of  the  men  whom  he 
had  thus  protected.  Austria's  sensibilities  must  have  been 
of  a  peculiar  nature  indeed,  if  they  could  bear  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  very  distinct  and  energetic  intervention  between  her 
and  her  intended  victim,  but  could  not  bear  to  hear  that 
the  rescued  victim  had  paid  Lord  Palmerston  a  formal  visit 
of  gratitude.  At  all  events,  it  does  not  seem  as  if  an  Eng- 

O  7  O 

lish  minister  was  bound  to  go  greatly  out  of  his  way  to  con- 
ciliate such  very  eccentric  and  morbid  sensibilities.  We 
owe  to  a  foreign  state  with  which  we  are  on  friendly  terms 
a  strict  and  honorable  neutrality.  Our  ministers  are  bound 
by  courtesy,  prudence,  and  good-sense  not  to  obtrude  any 
expression  of  their  opinion  touching  the  internal  dissensions 
of  a  foreign  state  on  the  representatives  of  that  state  or  the 
public.  But  they  are  not  by  any  means  bound  to  treat  the 
enemies  of  every  foreign  state  as  our  enemies.  They  are 
not  expected  to  conciliate  the  friendship  of  Austria,  for  ex- 


PALMERSTON.  387 

ample,  by  declaring  that  any  one  who  is  disliked  by  the  Em- 
peror of  Austria  shall  never  be  admitted  to  speech  of  them. 
If  Kossuth  had  come  as  the  professed  representative  of  an. 
established  government,  and  had  sought  an  official  inter- 
view with  Lord  Palmerston  in  that  capacity,  then,  indeed, 
it  would  have  been  proper  for  the  English  Foreign  Secre- 
tary to  refuse  to  receive  him.  Our  ministers,  Avith  perfect 
propriety,  refused  to  receive  Mr.  Mason  and  Mr.  Slidell,  the 
emissaries  of  the  Southern  Confederation,  as  official  represent- 
atives of  any  state.  But  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  when 
the  civil  war  was  over  in  America  an  English  statesman  in 
office  would  be  bound  to  decline  receiving  a  visit  from  Mr. 
Jefferson  Davis.  We  know,  in  fact,  that  the  ex-King  of 
Naples,  the  ex-King  of  Hanover,  Don  Carlos,  and  the  royal 
representatives  of  various  lost  causes,  are  constantly  re- 
ceived by  English  ministers  and  by  the  Queen  of  England, 
and  no  representatives  of  any  of  the  established  govern- 
ments would  think  of  offering  a  remonstrance.  If  the  Em- 
peror of  Austria  was  likely  to  be  offended  by  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  receiving  a  visit  from  Kossuth,  the  only  course  for  an 
English  minister,  as  it  seems  to  us,  was  to  leave  him  to  be 
offended,  and  to  recover  from  his  anger  whenever  he  chose 
to  allow  common -sense  to  resume  possession  of  his  mind. 
The  Queen  of  England  might  as  well  have  taken  offence  at 
the  action  of  the  American  Government,  who  actually  gave, 
not  merely  private  receptions,  but  public  appointments,  to 
Irish  refugees  after  the  outbreak  of  1848. 

Lord  Palmerston,  however,  gave  way,  and  did  not  receive 
the  visit  from  Kossuth.  The  hoped-for  result,  that  of  spar- 
ing the  sensibilities  of  the  Austrian  Government,  was  not  at- 
tained. In  fact,  things  turned  out  a  great  deal  worse  than 
they  might  have  done  if  the  interview  between  Lord  Palm- 
erston and  Kossuth  had  been  quietly  allowed  to  come  off. 
Meetings  were  held  to  express  sympathy  with  Kossuth,  and 
addresses  were  voted  to  Lord  Palmerston  thanking  him  for 
the  influence  he  had  exerted  in  preventing  the  surrender  of 
Kossuth  to  Austria.  Lord  Palmerston  consented  to  receive 
these  addresses  from  the  hands  of  deputations  at  the  For- 
eign Office.  The  deputations  represented  certain  metropoli- 
tan parishes,  and  were  the  exponents  of  markedly  Radical 
opinions.  Some  of  the  addresses  contained  strong  language 


388  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

•with  reference  to  the  Austrian  Government  nnd  the  Aus- 
trian Sovereign.  Lord  Palmerston  observed,  in  his  reply, 
that  there  were  expressions  contained  in  the  addresses  with 
which  he  could  hardly  be  expected  to  concur;  but  he  spoke 
in  a  manner  which  conveyed  the  idea  that  his  sympathies 
generally  were  with  the  cause  which  the  deputations  had 
adopted.  This  was  the  speech  containing  a  phrase  which 
was  identified  with  Palmerston's  name,  and  held  to  be  spe- 
cially characteristic  of  his  way  of  speaking,  and  indeed  of 
thinking,  for  many  years  after — in  fact,  to  the  close  of  his 
career.  The  noble  lord  told  the  deputation  that  the  past  cri- 
sis was  one  which  required  on  the  part  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment much  generalship  and  judgment;  and  that  "a  good 
deal  of  judicious  bottle-holding  was  obliged  to  be  brought 
into  play."  The  phrase  "  bottle  -  holding,"  borrowed  from 
the  prize-ring,  offended  a  good  many  persons  who  thought 
the  past  crisis  far  too  grave,  and  the  issues  it  involved  too 
stern,  to  be  properly  described  in  language  of  such  levity. 
But  the  general  public  were  amused  and  delighted  by  the 
words,  and  the  judicious  bottle-holder  became  more  of  a 
popular  favorite  than  ever.  Some  of  the  published  reports 
put  this  a  good  deal  more  strongly  than  Lord  Palmerston 
did,  or  at  least  than  he  intended  to  do;  and  he  always  in- 
sisted that  he  said  no  more  to  the  deputations  than  he  had 
often  said  in  the  House  of  Commons;  and  that  he  had  ex- 
pressly declared  he  could  not  concur  in  some  of  the  expres- 
sions contained  in  the  addresses.  Still,  the  whole  proceed- 
ing considerably  alarmed  some  of  Lord  Palmerston's  col- 
leagues, and  was  regarded  with  distinct  displeasure  by  the 
Queen  and  Prince  Albert.  The  Queen  specially  requested 
that  the  matter  should  be  brought  before  a  cabinet  council. 
Lord  John  Russell,  accordingly,  laid  the  whole  question  be- 
fore his  colleagues,  and  the  general  opinion  seemed  to  be 
that  Lord  Palmerston  had  acted  Avith  want  of  caution.  No 
formal  resolution  was  adopted.  It  was  thought  that  the 
general  expression  of  opinion  from  his  colleagues  and  the 
known  displeasure  of  the  Queen  would  be  enough  to  impress 
the  necessity  for  greater  prudence  on  the  mind  of  the  For- 
eign Secretary.  Lord  John  Russell,  in  communicating  with 
her  Majesty  as  to  the  proceedings  of  the  cabinet  council, 
expressed  a  hope  that  "it  will  have  its  effect  upon  Lord 


PALMERSTON.  389 

Palmerston,  to  whom  Lord  John  Russell  has  written  urging 
the  necessity  of  a  guarded  conduct  in  the  present  very  crit- 
ical condition  of  Europe."  This  letter  was  not  written  when 
startling  evidence  was  on  its  way  to  show  that  the  irresisti- 
ble Foreign  Secretary  had  been  making  a  stroke  off  his  own 
bat  again,  and  a  stroke  this  time  of  capital  importance  in 
the  general  game  of  European  politics.  The  possible  indis- 
cretion of  Lord  Palmerston's  dealings  with  a  deputation  or 
two  from  Finsbury  and  Islington  became  a  matter  of  little 
interest  when  the  country  was  called  upon  to  consider  the 
propriety  of  the  Foreign  Secretary's  dealings  with  the  new 
ruler  of  a  new  state  system,  with  the  author  of  the  coup 
d'etat. 

The  news  of  the  coup  d'etat  took  England  by  surprise. 
A  shock  went  through  the  whole  country.  Never,  probably, 
was  public  opinion  more  unanimous,  for  the  hour  at  least, 
than  in  condemnation  of  the  stroke  of  policy  ventured  on 
by  Louis  Napoleon,  and  the  savage  manner  in  which  it  was 
carried  to  success.  After  awhile,  no  doubt,  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  English  public  came  to  look  more  leniently 
on  what  had  been  done.  Many  soon  grew  accustomed  to 
the  story  of  the  massacres  along  the  Boulevards  of  Paris, 
and  lost  all  sense  of  their  horror.  Some  disposed  of  the 
whole  affair  after  the  satisfactory  principle  so  commonly 
adopted  by  English  people  in  judging  of  foreign  affairs,  and 
assumed  that  the  system  introduced  by  Louis  Napoleon  was 
a  very  good  sort  of  thing — for  the  French.  After  awhile 
a  certain  admiration,  not  to  say  adulation,  of  Louis  Napo- 
leon, began  to  be  a  kind  of  faith  with  many  Englishmen, 
and  the  coup  d'etat  was  condoned  and  even  approved  by 
them.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  when  the  story  first 
carne  to  be  told  in  England,  the  almost  universal  voice  of 
opinion  condemned  it  as  strongly  as  nearly  all  men  of  gen- 
nine  enlightenment  and  feeling  condemned  it  then  and 
since.  The  Queen  was  particularly  anxious  that  nothing 
should  be  said  by  the  British  ambassador  to  commit  us  to 
any  approval  of  what  had  been  done.  On  December  4th 
the  Queen  wrote  to  Lord  John  Russell  from  Osborne,  ex- 
pressing her  desire  that  Lord  Normanby,  our  ambassador  at 
Paris,  should  be  instructed  to  remain  entirely  passive,  and 
say  no  word  that  might  be  misconstrued  into  approval  of 


390  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  action  of  the  Prince  President.  The  cabinet  met  that 
same  day,  and  decided  that  it  was  expedient  to  follow  most 
closely  her  Majesty's  instructions.  But  they  decided  also, 
and  very  properly,  that  there  was  no  reason  for  Lord  Nor- 
manby  suspending  his  diplomatic  functions.  Lord  Nor- 
manby  had,  in  fact,  applied  for  instructions  on  this  point. 
Next  day  Lord  Palmerston,  as  Foreign  Secretary,  wrote  to 
Lord  'Normanby,  informing  him  that  he  was  to  make  no 
change  in  his  diplomatic  relations  with  the  French  Govern- 
ment. Lord  Normanby's  reply  to  this  despatch  created  a 
startling  sensation.  Our  ambassador  wrote  to  say  that 
when  he  called  on  the  French  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs 
to  inform  him  that  he  had  been  instructed  by  her  Majesty's 
Government  not  to  make  any  change  in  his  relations  with 
the  French  Government,  the  Minister,  M.  Turgot,  told  him 
that  he  had  heard  two  days  before  from  Count  Walewski, 
the  French  ambassador  in  London,  that  Lord  Palmerston 
had  expressed  to  him  his  entire  approval  of  what  Louis  Na- 
poleon had  done,  and  his  conviction  that  the  Prince  Presi- 
dent could  not  have  acted  otherwise.  It  would  not  be  easy 
to  exaggerate  the  sensation  produced  among  Lord  Palmer- 
ston's  colleagues  by  this  astounding  piece  of  news.  The 
Queen  wrote  at  once  to  Lord  John  Russell,  asking  him  if  he 
knew  anything  about  the  approval  which  "  the  French  Gov- 
ernment pretend  to  have  received ;"  declaring  that  she  could 
not  "believe  in  the  truth  of  the  assertion,  as  such  an  ap- 
proval given  by  Lord  Palmerston  would  have  been  in  com- 
plete contradiction  to  the  line  of  strict  neutrality  and  pas- 
siveness  which  the  Queen  had  expressed  her  desire  to  see 
followed  with  regard  to  the  late  convulsions  at  Paris." 
Lord  John  Russell  replied  that  he  had  already  written  to 
Lord  Palmerston,  "saying  that  he  presumed  there  was  no 
truth  in  the  report."  The  reply  of  Lord  Palmerston  was 
delayed  for  what  Lord  John  Russell  thought  an  unreason- 
able length  of  time  at  such  a  crisis;  but  when  it  came  it 
left  no  doubt  that  Lord  Palmerston  had  expressed  to  Count 
Walewski  his  approval  of  the  coup  d'etat.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston observed,  indeed,  that  Walewski  had  probably  given 
to  M.  Turgot  a  somewhat  highly  colored  report  of  what  he 
had  said,  and  that  the  report  had  lost  nothing  in  passing 
from  M.  Turgot  to  Lord  Normanby ;  but  the  substance  of 


PALMERSTOjS'.  391 

the  letter  was  a  full  admission  that  Lord  Palmerston  ap- 
proved of  what  had  been  done,  and  had  expressed  his  ap- 
proval to  Count  Walewski.  The  letters  of  explanation 
which  the  Foreign  Minister  wrote  on  the  subject,  whether 
to  Lord  Normanby  or  to  Lord  John  Russell,  were  elaborate 
justifications  of  the  coup  d'etat;  they  were,  in  fact,  exactly 
such  arguments  as  a  minister  of  Louis  Napoleon  might  with 
great  propriety  address  to  a  foreign  Court.  They  were  full 
'of  an  undisguised  and  characteristic  contempt  for  any  one 
who  could  think  otherwise  on  the  subject  than  as  Lord 
Palmerston  thought.  In  replying  to  Lord  John  Russell  the 
contempt  was  expressed  in  a  quiet  sneer;  in  the  letters  to 
Lord  Normanby  it  was  obtrusively  and  offensively  put  for- 
ward. Lord  John  Russell  in  vain  endeavored  to  fasten 
Palmerston's  attention  on  the  fact  that  the  question  was  not 
whether  the  action  of  Louis  Napoleon  was  historically  justi- 
fiable, but  whether  the  conduct  of  the  English  Foreign  Min- 
ister, in  expressing  approval  of  it  without  the  knowledge 
and  against  the  judgment  of  the  Queen  and  his  colleagues, 
was  politically  justifiable.  Lord  Palmerston  simply  return- 
ed to  his  defence  of  Louis  Napoleon,  and  his  assertion  that 
the  Prince  President  was  only  anticipating  the  intrigues  of 
the  Orleans  family  and  the  plans  of  the  Assembly.  Lord 
Palmerston,  indeed,  gave  a  very  minute  account  of  a  plot 
among  the  Orleans  princes  for  a  military  rising  against 
Louis  Napoleon.  No  evidence  of  the  existence  of  any 
such  plot  has  ever  been  discovered.  Louis  Napoleon  never 
pleaded  the  existence  of  such  a  plot  in  his  own  justification  ; 
it  if  now,  we  believe,  universally  admitted  that  Lord  Palm- 
erston was  for  once  the  victim  of  a  mere  canard.  But  even 
if  there  had  been  an  Orleanist  plot,  or  twenty  Orleanist 
plots,  it  never  has  been  part  of  the  duty  or  the  policy  of  an 
English  Government  to  express  approval  of  anything  and 
everything  that  a  foreign  rufer  may  do  to  anticipate  or  put 
down  a  plot  against  him.  The  measures  may  be  unjusti- 
fiable in  their  principle  or  in  their  severity ;  the  plot  may 
be  of  insignificant  importance,  utterly  inadequate  to  excuse 
any  extraordinary  measures.  The  English  Government  is 
not  in  ordinary  cases  called  upon  to  express  any  opinion 
whatever.  It  had,  in  this  case,  deliberately  decided  that  all 
expression  of  opinion  should  be  scrupulously  avoided,  lest 


392  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

by  any  chance  the  French  Government  should  be  led  to  be- 
lieve that  England  approved  of  what  had  been  done. 

Lord  Palmerston  endeavored  to  draw  a  distinction  be- 
tween the  expressions  of  a  Foreign  Secretary  in  conversa- 
tion with  an  ambassador,  and  a  formal  declaration  of  opin- 
ion. But  it  is  clear  that  the  French  ambassador  did  not 
understand  Lord  Palmerston  to  be  merely  indulging  in  the 
irresponsible  gossip  of  private  life,  and  that  Lord  Palmer- 
ston never  said  a  word  to  impress  him  Avith  the  belief  that 
their  conversation  had  that  colorless  and  unmeaning  charac- 
ter. In  any  case,  it  was  surely  a  piece  of  singular  indiscre- 
tion on  the  part  of  a  Foreign  Minister  to  give  to  the  French 
ambassador,  even  in  private  conversation,  an  unqualified 
opinion  in  favor  of  a  stroke  of  policy  of  which  the  British 
Government,  as  a  whole,  and  indeed  with  the  one  exception 
of  Lord  Palmerston,  entirely  disapproved.  To  give  such  an 
opinion  without  qualification  or  explanation  was  to  mislead 
the  French  ambassador  in  the  grossest  manner,  and  to  send 
him  away,  as  in  fact  he  was  sent,  under  the  impression  that 
the  conduct  of  his  chief  had  the  approval  of  the  Sovereign 
and  Government  of  England.  Let  it  be  remembered  further 
that  the  Foreign  Secretary  who  did  this  had  been  again  and 
again  rebuked  for  acting  on  his  own  responsibility,  for  say- 
ing and  doing  things  which  pledged,  or  seemed  to  pledge, 
the  responsibility  of  the  Government  without  any  authority, 
that  a  formal  threat  of  dismissal  actually  hung  over  his  head 
in  the  event  of  his  repeating  such  indiscretions,  and  we  shall 
be  better  able  to  form  some  idea  of  the  sensation  which  was 
created  in  England  by  the  revelation  of  Lord  Palmerston's 
conduct.  Many  of  his  colleagues  had  cordially  sympathized 
with  his  views  on  the  occasion  of  former  indiscretions;  and 
even  while  admitting  that  he  had  been  indiscreet,  yet  ac- 
knowledged to  themselves  that  their  opinion  on  the  broad 
question  involved  was  not  different  from  his.  But  even 
these  drew  back  from  any  approval  of  his  conduct  in  regard 
to  the  coup  d'etat.  The  almost  universal  judgment  was 
that  he  had  gone  surprisingly  wrong.  Not  a  few,  finding 
it  impossible  to  account  otherwise  for  such  a  proceeding, 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  have  been  determined 
somehow  to  bring  about  a  rupture  with  his  colleagues  of 
the  cabinet,  and  had  chosen  this  high-handed  assertion  of 


PALMERSTON.  393 

his  will  as  the  best  means  of  flinging  his  defiance  in  their 
teeth. 

Lord  John  Russell  made  up  his  mind.  He  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  he  could  no  longer  go  on  with  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  as  a  colleague  in  the  Foreign  Office,  and  lie  signified 
his  decision  to  Lord  Palmerston  himself.  "While  I  concur," 
thus  Lord  John  Russell  wrote,  "in  the  foreign  policy  of 
which  you  have  been  the  adviser,  and  much  as  I  admire  the 
energy  and  ability  with  which  it  has  been  carried  into  ef- 
fect, I  cannot  but  observe  that  misunderstandings  perpetu- 
ally renewed,  violations  of  prudence  and  decorum  too  fre- 
quently repeated,  have  marred  the  effects  which  ought  to 
have  followed  from  a  sound  policy  and  able  administration. 
I  am,  therefore,  most  reluctantly  compelled  to  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs  can  no  longer 
be  left  in  your  hands  with  advantage  to  the  country." 
Rather  unfortunately,  Lord  John  Russell  endeavored  to 
soften  the  blow  by  offering,  if  Lord  Palmerston  should  be 
willing,  to  recommend  him  to  the  Queen  to  fill  the  office  of 
Lord-lieutenant  of  Ireland.  This  was  a  proposal  which  we 
agree  with  Mr. Evelyn  Ashley,Lord  Palmerston's  biographer, 
in  regarding  as  almost  comical  in  its  character.  Lord  Palm- 
erston's whole  soul  was  in  foreign  affairs.  He  had  never 
affected  any  particular  interest  in  Irish  business.  He  cared 
little  even  for  the  home  politics  of  England ;  it  was  out  of 
the  question  to  suppose  that  he  would  consent  to  bury  him- 
self in  the  Viceregal  Court  of  Dublin,  and  occupy  his  diplo- 
matic talents  in  composing  disputes  for  precedence  between 
Protestant  deans  and  Catholic  bishops,  and  in  doling  out  the 
due  proportion  of  invitations  to  the  various  ranks  of  aspiring 
traders  and  shopkeepers  and  their  wives.  Lord  Palmerston 
declined  the  offer  Avith  open  contempt,  and,  indeed,  it  can 
hardly  be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  Lord  John  Russell 
expected  he  would  have  seriously  entertained  it.  The  quar- 
rel was  <:ompl£te ;  Lord  Palmerston  ceased  for  the  time  to 
be  Foreign  Secretary,  and  his  place  was  taken  by  Lord 
Gran  vi  lie. 

Seldom  has  a  greater  sensation  been  produced  by  the  re- 
moval of  a  minister.  The  effect  which  was  created  all  over 
Europe  was  probably  just  what  Lord  Palmerston  himself 
would  have  desired ;  the  belief  prevailed  everywhere  that 

17* 


A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

he  had  been  sacrificed  to  the  monarchical  and  reactionary 
influences  all  over  the  Continent.  The  statesmen  of  Europe 
were  under  the  impression  that  Lord  Palmerston  was  put 
out  of  oftice  as  an  evidence  that  England  was  about  to  with- 
draw from  her  former  attitude  of  sympathy  with  the  popu- 
lar movements  of  the  Continent.  Lord  Palmerston  himself 
fell  under  a  delusion  which  seems  marvellous  in  a  man  pos- 
sessed of  his  clear,  strong  common-sense.  He  conceived  that 
lie  had  been  sacrificed  to  reactionary  intrigue.  He  wrote  to 
his  brother  to  say  that  the  real  ground  for  his  dismissal  was 
a  "  weak  truckling  to  the  hostile  intrigues  of  the  Orleans 
family,  Austria,  Russia,  Saxony,  and  Bavaria,  and,  in  some 
degree,  of  the  present  Prussian  Government."  "All  these 
parties,"  he  said,  "found  their  respective  views  and  systems 
of  policy  thwarted  by  the  course  pursued  by  the  British 
Government,  and  they  thought  that  if  they  could  remove 
the  minister  they  would  change  the  policy.  They  had,  for 
a  long  time  past,  effectually  poisoned  the  mind  of  the  Queen 
and  Prince  against  me,  and  John  Russell  giving  way  rather 
encouraged  than  discountenanced  the  desire  of  the  Queen 
to  remove  me  from  the  Foreign  Oftice."  So  strongly  did 
the  idea  prevail  that  an  intrigue  of  foreign  diplomatists  had 
overthrown  Palmerston,  that  the  Russian  ambassador,  Bar- 
on Brunnow,took  the  very  ill-advised  step  of  addressing  to 
Lord  John  Russell  a  disclaimer  of  any  participation  in  such 
a  proceeding.  The  Queen  made  a  proper  comment  on  the 
letter  of  Baron  Brunnow  by  describing  it  as  "  very  presum- 
ing," inasmuch  as  it  insinuated  the  possibility  "  of  changes 
of  governments  in  this  country  taking  place  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  foreign  ministers."  Lord  Palmerston  was,  of  course, 
entirely  mistaken  in  supposing  that  any  foreign  interference 
had  contributed  to  his  removal  from  the  Foreign  Office. 
The  only  wonder  is  how  a  man  so  experienced  as  he  could 
have  convinced  himself  of  such  a  thing;  at  least  it  would 
be  a  wonder  if  one  did  not  know  that  the  mo^t  experienced 
author  or  -artist  can  always  persuade  himself  that  a  dispar- 
aging critique  is  the  result  of  personal  and  malignant  hostil- 
ity. But  that  the  feeling  of  the  Queen  and  the  Prince  had 
long  been  against  him  can  hardly  admit  of  dispute.  Prince 
Albert  seems  not  to  have  taken  any  pains  to  conceal  his  dis- 
like and  distrust  of  Palmerston.  Nearly  two  years  before, 


PALMERSTOX.  395 

when  the  French  ambassador  was  recalled  for  a  time,  the 
Prince  wrote  to  Lord  John  Russell  to  say  that  both  the 
Queen  and  himself  were  exceedingly  sorry  to  hear  of  the 
recall ;  adding,  "  We  are  not  surprised,  however,  that  Lord 
Palmerston's  mode  of  doing  business  should  not  be  borne 
by  the  susceptible  French  Government  with  the  same  good- 
humor  and  forbearance  as  by  his  colleagues."  At  the  mo- 
ment when  Lord  John  Russell  resolved  on  getting  rid  of 
Lord  Palmerston,  Prince  Albert  wrote  to  him  to  say  that 
"  the  sudden  termination  of  your  difference  with  Lord  Palm- 
erston has  taken  us  much  by  surprise,  as  we  were  wont  to 
see  such  differences  terminate  in  his  carrying  his  points,  and 
leaving  the  defence  of  them  to  his  colleagues,  and  the  dis- 
credit to  the  Queen."  It  is  clear  from  this  letter  alone  that 
the  court  was  set  against  Lord  Palmerston  at  that  time. 
The  court  was  sometimes  right  where  Palmerston  was 
wrong;  but  the  fact  that  he  then  knew  himself  to  be  in  an- 
tagonism to  the  court  is  of  importance  both  in  judging  of 
his  career  and  in  estimating  the  relative  strength  of  forces 
in  the  politics  of  England. 

Lord  Palmerston  then  was  dismissed.  The  meeting  of 
Parliament  took  place  on  the  3d  of  February  following, 
1852.  It  would  be  superfluous  to  say  that  the  keenest  anx- 
iety was  felt  to  know  the  full  reasons  of  the  sudden  dismis- 
sal. To  quote  the  words  used  by  Mr.  Roebuck,  "  The  most 
marked  person  in  the  Administration,  he  around  whom  all 
the  party  battles  of  the  Administration  had  been  fought, 
whose  political  existence  had  been  made  the  political  exist- 
ence of  the  Government  itself,  the  person  on  whose  being 
in  office  the  Government  rested  their  existence  as  a  gov- 
ernment, was  dismissed;  their  right  hand  was  cut  off,  their 
most  powerful  arm  was  taken  away,  and  at  the  critical  time 
when  it  was  most  needed."  The  House  of  Commons  was 
not  long  left  to  wait  for  an  explanation.  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell made  a  long  speech,  in  which  he  went  into  the  whole 
history  of  the  differences  between  Lord  Palmerston  and  his 
colleagues ;  and,  what  was  more  surprising  to  the  House, 
into  a  history  of  the  late  Foreign  Secretary's  differences 
with  his  Sovereign,  and  the  threat  of  dismissal  which  had  so 
long  been  hanging  over  his  head.  The  Prime-minister  read 
to  the  House  the  Queen's  memorandum,  which  we  have  al- 


396  A   HISTORY   OF   OUK   OWN  TIMES. 

ready  quoted.  Lord  John  Russell's  speech  was  a  great  suc- 
cess. Lord  Palmerston's  was,  even  in  the  estimation  of  his 
closest  friends,  a  failure.  Far  different,  indeed,  was  the  ef- 
fect it  produced  from  the  almost  magical  influence  of  that 
wonderful  speech  on  the  "Don  Pacifico"  question, which  had 
compelled  even  unconvinced  opponents  to  genuine  admira- 
tion. Palmerston  seemed  to  have  practically  no  defence. 
He  only  went  over  again  the  points  put  by  him  in  the  cor- 
respondence already  noticed ;  contended  that,  on  the  whole, 
he  had  judged  rightly  of  the  French  crisis,  and  that  he  could 
not  help  forming  an  opinion  on  it,  and  so  forth.  Of  the 
Queen's  memorandum  he  said  nothing.  He  did  not  even 
attempt  to  explain  how  it  came  about  that,  having  received 
so  distinct  and  severe  an  injunction,  he  had  ventured  deliber- 
ately to  disregard  it  in  a  matter  of  the  greatest  national  im- 
portance. Some  of  his  admirers  were  of  opinion  then,  and 
long  after,  that  the  reading  of  the  memorandum  must  have 
come  on  him  by  surprise ;  that  Lord  John  Russell  must  have 
sprung  a  mine  upon  him;  and  that  Palmerston  was  taken 
unfairly  and  at  a  disadvantage.  But  it  is  certain  that  Lord 
John  Russell  gave  notice  to  his  late  colleague  of  his  inten- 
tion to  read  the  memorandum  of  the  Queen.  Besides,  Lord 
Palmerston  was  one  of  the  most  ready  and  self-possessed 
speakers  that  ever  addressed  the  House  of  Commons.  Dur- 
ing the  very  reading  of  the  memorandum  he  could  have  found 
time  to  arrange  his  ideas,  and  to  make  out  some  show  of  a 
case  for  himself.  The  truth,  we  believe,  is  that  Lord  Palm- 
erston deliberately  declined  to  make  any  reply  to  that  part 
of  Lord  John  Russell's  speech  which  disclosed  the  letter  from 
the  Queen.  He  made  up  his  mind  that  a  dispute  between  a 
sovereign  and  a  subject  would  be  unbecoming  of  both,  and 
he  passed  over  the  memorandum  in  deliberate  silence.  He 
doubtless  felt  convinced  that,  even  though  such  discretion 
involved  him  for  the  moment  in  seeming  defeat,  it  would  in 
the  long-run  reckon  to  his  credit  and  his  advantage.  Lord 
Dnlling,  better  known  as  Sir  Henry  Bnlwer,  was  present  dur- 
ing the  debate,  and  formed  an  opinion  of  Palmerston's  con- 
duct which  seems  in  every  way  correct  and  far-seeing.  "  I 
must  say,"  Lord  Dalling  writes,  "that  I  never  admired  him 
so  much  as  at  this  crisis.  He  evidently  thought  he  had 
been  ill-treated  ;  but  I  never  heard  him  make  an  unfair  or 


PALMERSTOK  397 

irritable  remark,  nor  did  he  seem  in  anywise  stunned  by  the 
blow  he  had  received,  or  dismayed  by  the  isolated  position 
in  which  he  stood.  I  should  say  that  he  seemed  to  con- 
sider that  he  had  a  quarrel  put  upon  him  which  it  was  his 
wisest  course  to  close  by  receiving  the  fire  of  his  adversary 
and  not  returning  it.  He  could  not,  in  fact,  have  gained  a 
victory  against  the  Premier  on  the  ground  which  Lord  John 
Russell  had  chosen  for  the  combat,  which  would  not  have 
been  more  permanently  disadvantageous  to  him  than  a  de- 
feat. The  faults  of  which  he  had  accused  him  did  not  touch 
his  own  honor  nor  that  of  his  country.  Let  them  be  admit- 
ted, and  there  was  an  end  of  the  matter.  By-and-by  an  oc- 
casion would  probably  arise  in  which  he  might  choose  an  ad- 
vantageous occasion  for  giving  battle,  and  he  was  willing  to 
wait  calmly  for  that  occasion." 

Lord  Bailing  judged  accurately  so  far  as  his  judgment 
went.  But  while  we  agree  with  him  in  thinking  that  Lord 
Palmerston  refrained  from  returning  his  adversary's  fire  for 
the  reasons  Lord  Dalling  has  given,  we  are  strongly  of  opin- 
ion that  other  reasons  too  influenced  Palmerston.  He  knew 
that  he  was  not  at  that  time  much  liked  or  trusted  by  the 
Queen  and  Prince  Albert.  He  was  not  sorry  that  the  fact 
should  be  made  known  to  the  world.  He  thoroughly  un- 
derstood English  public  opinion,  and  was  not  above  taking 
advantage  of  its  moods  and  its  prejudices.  He  did  not  think 
a  statesman  would  stand  any  the  worse  in  the  general  esti- 
mation of  the  English  public,  then,  because  it  was  known  that 
lie  was  not  admire'd  by  Prince  Albert. 

But  the  almost  universal  opinion  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons and  of  the  clubs  was  that  Lord  Palmerston's  career  was 
closed.  "Palmerston  is  smashed!"  was  the  common  saying 
of  the  clubs.  A  night  or  two  after  the  debate  Lord  Dalling 
met  Mr.  Disraeli  on  the  staircase  of  the  Russian  Embassy, 
and  Disraeli  remarked  to  him  that  "there  was  a  Palmerston." 

Lord  Palmerston  evidently  did  not  think  so.  The  letters 
he  wrote  to  friends  immediately  after  his  fall  show  him  as 
jaunty  and  full  of  confidence  as  ever.  He  was  quite  satis- 
fied with  the  way  things  had  gone.  He  waited  calmly  for 
what  he  called,  a  few  days  afterward,  "  my  tit-for-tat  with 
John  Russell,"  which  came  about,  indeed,  sooner  than  even 
lie  himself  could  well  have  expected. 


398  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

We  have  not  hesitated  to  express  our  opinion  that 
throughout  the  whole  of  this  particular  dispute  Lord  Palm- 
crston  was  in  the  wrong.  He  was  in  the  wrong  in  many, 
if  not  most,  of  the  controversies  which  had  preceded  it;  that 
is  to  say,  he  was  wrong  in  committing  England,  as  he  so 
often  did,  to  measures  which  had  not  had  the  approval  of 
the  Sovereign  or  his  colleagues.  In  the  memorable  dispute 
which  brought  matters  to  a  crisis,  he  seems  to  us  to  have 
been  in  the  wrong  not  less  in  what  he  did  than  in  his  man- 
ner of  doing  it.  Yet  it  ought  not  to  have  been  difficult  for 
a  calm  observer,  even  at  the  time,  to  see  that  Lord  Palrner- 
ston  was  likely  to  have  the  best  of  the  controversy  in  the 
end.  The  faults  of  which  he  was  principally  accused  were 
not  such  as  the  English  people  would  find  it  very  hard  to 
forgive.  He  was  said  to  be  too  brusque  and  high-handed  in 
his  dealings  with  foreign  states  and  ministers;  but  it  did 
not  seem  to  the  English  people  in  general  as  if  this  was  an 
offence  for  which  his  own  countrymen  were  bound  to  con- 
demn him  too  severely.  There  was  a  general  impression 
that  his  influence  was  exercised  on  behalf  of  popular  move- 
ments abroad ;  and  an  impression  nearly  as  general  that  if 
he  had  not  acted  a  good  deal  on  his  own  impulses  and  of 
his  own  authority  he  could  hardly  have  served  any  popular 
cause  so  well.  The  coup  cVetat  certainly  was  not  popular  in 
England.  For  a  long  time  it  was  a  subject  of  general  rep- 
rehension ;  but  even  at  that  time  men  who  condemned  the 
coup  d'etat  were  not  disposed  to  condemn  Lord  Palmerston 
overmuch  because,  acting  as  usual  on  a  personal  impulse,  he 
had  in  that  instance  made  a  mistake.  There  was  even  in  his 
error  something  dashing,  showy,  and  captivating  to  the  gen- 
eral public.  He  made  the  influence  of  England  felt,  people 
said.  His  chief  fault  was  that  he  was  rather  too  strong  for 
those  around  him.  If  any  grave  crisis  came,  he,  it  was  mur- 
mured, and  he  alone,  would  be  equal  to  the  occasion,  and 
would  maintain  the  dignity  of  England.  Neither  in  war 
nor  in  statesmanship  does  a  man  suffer  much  loss  of  pop- 
ularity by  occasionally  disobeying  orders  and  accomplishing 
daring  feats.  Lord  Palmerston  saw  his  way  clearly  at  :i 
critical  period  of  his  career.  He  saw  that  at  that  time  there 
was,  rightly  or  wrongly,  a  certain  jealousy  of  the  influence 
of  Prince  Albeit,  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  take  advantage 


BIRTH   OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH  OF  "THE   DUKE."   399 

of  the  fact.  He  bore  his  temporary  disgrace  with  well-justi- 
fied composure.  "The  devil  aids  him,  surely,"  said  Sussex, 
speaking  to  Raleigh  of  Leicester  in  Scott's  "  Kenilworth," 
"for  all  that  would  sink  another  ten  fathom  deep  seems  but 
to  make  him  float  the  more  easily."  Some  rival  may  have 
thought  thus  of  Lord  Palmerston. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

BIRTH    OP   THE    EMPIRE;     DEATH    OF    "THE    DUKE." 

THE  year  1852  was  one  of  profound  emotion  and  even  ex- 
citement in  England.  An  able  writer  has  remarked  that 
the  history  of  the  Continent  of  Europe  might  be  traced 
through  the  history  of  England,  if  all  other  sources  of  in- 
formation were  destroyed,  by  the  influence  which  every 
great  event  in  Continental  affairs  produces  on  the  mood  and 
policy  of  England.  As  the  astronomer  infers  the  existence 
and  the  attributes  of  some  star  his  keenest  glass  will  not 
reveal  by  the  perturbations  its  neighborhood  causes  to  some 
body  of  light  within  his  ken,  so  the  student  of  English  his- 
tory might  well  discover  commotion  on  the  Continent  by 
the  evidence  of  a  corresponding  movement  in  England.  All 
through  the  year  1852  the  national  mind  of  England  was 
disturbed.  The  country  was  stirring  itself  in  quite  an  Tin- 
usual  manner.  A  military  spirit  was  exhibiting  itself  every- 
where, not  unlike  that  told  of  in  Shakspeare's  "Henry  the 
Fourth."  The  England  of  1852  seems  to  threaten  that  "  ere 
this  year  expire  we  bear  our  civil  swords  and  native  fire  as 
far  as  France."  At  least  the  civil  swords  were  sharpened 
in  order  that  the  country  might  be  ready  for  a  possible  and 
even  an  anticipated  invasion  from  France.  The  Volunteer 
movement  sprang  into  sudden  existence.  All  over  the 
country  corps  of  young  volunteers  were  being  formed.  An 
immense  amount  of  national  enthusiasm  accompanied  and 
acclaimed  the  formation  of  the  volunteer  army,  which  re- 
ceived the  sanction  of  the  Crown  early  in  the  year,  and  thus 
became  a  national  institution. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  movement  was  explained  some 
years  after  by  Mr.  Tennyson,  in  a  string  of  verses  which  did 


400  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

more  honor  perhaps  to  his  patriotic  feeling  than  to  his  po- 
etic genius.  The  verses  are  absurdly  unworthy  of  Tenny- 
son as  a  poet;  but  they  express  with  unmistakable  clearness 
the  popular  sentiment  of  the  hour;  the  condition  of  uncer- 
tainty, vague  alarm,  and  very  general  determination  to  be 
ready  at  all  events  for  whatever  might  come.  "  Form,  form, 
riflemen,  form  !"  wrote  the  Laureate ;  "  better  a  rotten  bor- 
ough or  two  than  a  rotten  fleet  and  a  town  in  flames."  "  True 
that  we  have  a  faithful  ally,  but  only  the  devil  knows  what 
he  means."  This  was  the  alarm  and  the  explanation.  We 
had  a  faithful  ally,  no  doubt ;  but  we  certainly  did  not  quite 
know  what  he  meant.  All  the  earlier  part  of  the  year  had 
witnessed  the  steady  progress  of  the  Prince  President  of 
France  to  an  imperial  throne.  The  previous  year  had  closed 
upon  his  coup  d'etat.  He  had  arrested,  imprisoned,  banish- 
ed, or  shot  his  principal  enemies,  and  had  demanded  from 
the  French  people  a  Presidency  for  ten  years — a  ministry 
responsible  to  the  executive  power  —  himself  alone  —  and 
two  political  Chambers  to  be  elected  by  universal  suffrage. 
Nearly  five  hundred  prisoners,  untried  before  any  tribunal, 
even  that  of  a  drum-head,  had  been  shipped  off  to  Cayenne. 
The  sti'eets  of  Paris  had  been  soaked  in  blood.  The  Presi- 
dent instituted  a  plebiscite,  or  vote  of  the  whole  people,  and 
of  course  he  got  all  he  asked  for.  There  was  no  arguing 
with  the  commander  of  twenty  legions,  and  of  such  legions 
as  those  that  had  operated  with  terrible  efficiency  on  the 
Boulevards.  The  first  day  of  the  new  year  saw  the  relig- 
ious ceremony  at  Notre  Dame  to  celebrate  the  acceptance 
of  the  ten  years'  presidency  by  Louis  Napoleon.  The  same 
day  a  decree  was  published  in  the  name  of  the  President 
declaring  that  the  French  eagle  should  be  restored  to  the 
standards  of  the  army,  as  a  symbol  of  the  regenerated  mili- 
tary genius  of  France.  A  few  days  after,  the  Prince  Presi- 
dent decreed  the  confiscation  of  the  property  of  the  Orleans 
family  and  restored  titles  of  nobility  in  France.  The  birth^ 
day  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon  was  declared  by  decree  to  be 
the  only  national  holiday.  When  the  two  legislative  bodies 
came  to  be  sworn  in,  the  President  made  an  announcement 
which  certainly  did  not  surprise  many  persons,  but  which 
nevertheless  sent  a  thrill  abroad  over  all  parts  of  Europe. 
If  hostile  parties  continued  to  plot  against  him,  the  Presi- 


BIRTH  OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH  OF  "THE   DUKE."  401 

dent  intimated,  and  to  question  the  legitimacy  of  the  power 
he  had  assumed  by  virtue  of  the  national  vote,  then  it  might 
be  necessary  to  demand  from  the  people,  in  the  name  of  the 
repose  of  France,  "  a  new  title  which  will  irrevocably  fix 
upon  my  head  the  power  with  which  they  have  invested 
me."  There  could  be  no  further  doubt.  The  Bonapartist 
Empire  was  to  be  restored.  A  new  Napoleon  was  to  come 
to  the  throne. 

"Only  the  devil  knows  what  he  means," indeed.  So  peo- 
ple were  all  saying  throughout  England  in  1852.  The  scheme 
went  on  to  its  development,  and  before  the  year  was  quite 
out  Louis  Napoleon  was  proclaimed  Emperor  of  the  French. 
Men  had  noticed  as  a  curious,  not  to  say  ominous,  coinci- 
dence that  on  the  very  day  when  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
died  the  Moniteur  announced  that  the  French  people  were 
receiving  the  Prince  President  everywhere  as  the  Emperor- 
elect,  and  as  the  elect  of  God ;  and  another  French  journal 
published  an  article  hinting,  not  obscurely,  at  the  invasion 
and  conquest  of  England  as  the  first  great  duty  of  a  new 
Napoleonic  Empire.  The  Prince  President,  indeed,  in  one  of 
the  provincial  speeches  which  he  delivered  just  before  he  was 
proclaimed  Emperor,  had  talked  earnestly  of  pence.  In  his 
famous  speech  to  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  of  Bordeaux 
on  October  9th,  he  denied  that  the  restored  Empire  would 
mean  war.  "  I  say,"  he  declared,  raising  his  voice  and  speak- 
ing with  energy  and  emphasis,  "  the  Empire  is  peace."  But 
the  assurance  did  not  do  much  to  satisfy  Europe.  Had*  not 
the  same  voice,  it  was  asked,  declaimed  Avith  equal  energy 
and  earnestness  the  terms  of  the  oath  to  the  Republican 
Constitution?  Never,  said  a  bitter  enemy  of  the  new  Em- 
pire, believe  the  word  of  a  Bonaparte,  unless  when  he  prom- 
ises to  kill  somebody.  Such  was,  indeed,  the  common  sen- 
timent of  a  large  number  of  the  English  people  during  the 
eventful  year  when  the  President  became  Emperor,  and 
Prince  Louis  Napoleon  was  Napoleon  the  Third. 

It  would  have  been  impossible  that  the  English  people 
could  view  all  this  without  emotion  and  alarm.  It  had  been 
clearly  seen  how  the  Prince  President  had  carried  his  point 
thus  far.  He  had  appealed  at  every  step  to  the  memory  of 
the  Napoleonic  legend.  He  had  in  every  possible  way  re- 
vived and  reproduced  the  attributes  of  the  reign  of  the  Great 


402  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Emperor.  His  accession  to  power  was  strictly  a  military 
and  a  Napoleonic  triumph.  In  ordinary  circumstances  the 
English  people  would  not  have  troubled  themselves  much 
about  any  change  in  the  form  of  government  of  a  foreign 
country.  They  might  have  felt  a  strong  dislike  for  the 
manner  in  which  such  a  change  had  been  brought  about; 
but  it  would  have  been  in  nowise  a  matter  of  personal  con- 
cern to  them.  But  they  could  not  see  with  indifference  the 
rise  of  a  new  Napoleon  to  power  on  the  strength  of  the  old 
Napoleonic  legend.  The  one  special  characteristic  of  the 
Napoleonic  principle  was  its  hostility  to  England.  The  life 
of  the  Great  Napoleon  in  its  greatest  days  had  been  devoted 
.to  the  one  purpose  of  humiliating  England.  His  plans  had 
been  foiled  by  England.  Whatever  hands  may  have  joined  in 
pressing  him  to  the  ground,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  he 
owed  his  fall  principally  to  England.  Pie  died  a  prisoner  of 
England,  and  with  his  hatred  of  her  embittered  rather  than 
appeased.  It  did  not  seem  unreasonable  to  believe  that  the 
successor  who  had  been  enabled  to  mount  the  Imperial 
throne  simply  because  he  bore  the  name  and  represented 
the  principles  of  the  First  Napoleon  would  inherit  the  hatred 
to  England  and  the  designs  against  England.  Everything 
else  that  savored  of  the  Napoleonic  era  had  been  revived ; 
why  should  this,  its  principal  characteristic,  be  allowed  to 
lie  in  the  tomb  of  the  First  Emperor?  The  policy  of  the 
First  Napoleon  had  lighted  up  a  fire  of  hatred  between  Eng- 
land and  France  which  at  one  time  seemed  inextinguishable. 
There  were  many  who  regarded  that  international  hate  as 
something  like  that  of  the  hostile  brothers  in  the  classic 
story,  the  very  flames  of  whose  funeral  piles  refused  to  min- 
gle in  the  air;  or  like  that  of  the  rival  Scottish  families, 
whose  blood,  it  was  said,  would  never  commingle  though 
poured  into  one  dish.  It  did  not  seem  possible  that  a  new 
Emperor  Napoleon  could  arise  without  bringing  a  restora- 
tion of  that  hatred  along  with  him. 

There  were  some  personal  reasons,  too,  for  particular  dis- 
trust of  the  upcoming  Emperor  among  the  English  people. 
Louis  Napoleon  had  lived  many  years  in  England.  He  was 
as  well  known  there  as  any  prominent  member  of  the  Eng- 
lish aristocracy.  He  Avent  a  good  deal  into  very  various  so- 
ciety, literary,  artistic,  merely  fashionable,  purely  rowdy,  as 


BIRTH  OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH  OF  "THE   DUKE."   403 

well  as  into  that  political  soc'icty  which  might  have  seemed 
natural  to  him.  In  all  circles  the  same  opinion  appears  to 
have  been  formed  of  him.  From  the  astute  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  to  the  most  ignorant  of  the  horse-jockeys  and  ballet- 
girls  with  Avhom  he  occasionally  consorted,  all  who  met  him 
seemed  to  think  of  the  Prince  in  much  the  same  way.  It 
was  agreed  on  all  hands  that  he  was  a  fatuous,  dreamy, 
rnoony,  impracticable,  stupid  young  man.  A  sort  of  stolid 
amiability,  not  enlightened  enough  to  keep  him  out  of  low 
company  and  questionable  conduct,  appeared  to  be  his  prin- 
cipal characteristic.  He  constantly  talked  of  his  expected 
accession  somehow  and  some  time  to  the  throne  of  France, 
and  people  only  smiled  pityingly  at  him.  His  attempts  at 
Strasburg  and  Boulogne  had  covered  him  with  ridicule  and 
contempt.  We  cannot  remember  one  authentic  account  of 
any  Englishman  of  mark  at  that  time  having  professed  to 
see  any  evidence  of  capacity  and  strength  of  mind  in  Prince 
Louis  Napoleon. 

When  the  coup  (Vetat  came  and  was  successful,  the  amaze- 
ment of  the  English  public  was  unbounded.  Never  had  any 
plot  been  more  skilfully  and  more  carefully  planned,  more 
daringly  carried  out.  Here  evidently  was  a  master  in  the 
art  of  conspiracy.  Here  was  the  combination  of  steady 
caution  and  boundless  audacity.  What  a  subtlety  of  de- 
sign ;  what  a  perfection  of  silent  self-control !  How  slowly 
the  plan  had  been  matured;  how  suddenly  it  was  flashed 
upon  the  world  and  carried  to  success  !  No  haste,  no  delay, 
no  scruple,  no  remorse,  no  fear  !  And  all  this  was  the  work 
of  the  dull  dawdler  of  English  drawing-rooms;  the  heavy, 
apathetic,  unmoral  rather  than  immoral  haunter  of  English 
race  -  courses  and  gambling-houses!  What  new  surprise 
might  not  be  feared,  what  subtle  and  daring  enterprise 
might  not  reasonably  be  expected,  from  one  who  could  thus 
conceal  and  thus  reveal  himself,  and  do  both  with  a  like 
success ! 

Louis  Napoleon,  said  a  member  of  his  family,  deceived 
Europe  twice:  first  when  he  succeeded  in  passing  oif  as  an 
idiot,  and  next  when  he  succeeded  in  passing  oif  as  a  states- 
man. The  epigram  had  doubtless  a  great  deal  of  truth  in 
it.  The  coup  d'etat  was  probably  neither  planned  nor  car- 
ried to  success  by  the  cleverness  and  energy  of  Louis  Napo- 


404  A   HISTORY  OF  OUE  OWN  TIMES. 

leon.  Cooler  and  stronger  heads  and  hands  are  responsible 
for  the  execution  at  least  of  that  enterprise.  The  Prince,  it 
is  likely,  played  little  more  than  a  passive  part  in  it,  and 
might  have  lost  his  nerve  more  than  once  but  for  the  great- 
er resolution  of  some  of  his  associates,  who  were  determined 
to  crown  him  for  their  own  sakes  as  well  as  for  his.  But  at 
the  time  the  world  at  large  saw  only  Louis  Napoleon  in  the 
whole  scheme,  conception,  execution,  and  all.  The  idea  was 
formed  of  a  colossal  figure  of  cunning  and  daring — a  Brutus, 
a  Talleyrand,  a  Philip  of  Spain,  and  a  Napoleon  the  First  all 
in  one.  Those  who  detested  him  most  admired  and  feared 
him  not  the  least.  Who  can  doubt,  it  was  asked,  that  he 
will  endeavor  to  make  himself  the  heir  of  the  revenges  of 
Napoleon?  Who  can  believe  any  pledges  he  may  give? 
How  enter  into  any  treaty  or  bond  of  any  kind  with  such  a 
man?  Where  is  the  one  that  can  pretend  to  say  he  sees 
through  him  and  understands  his  schemes? 

Had  Louis  Napoleon  any  intention  at  anytime  of  invading 
England  ?     We  are  inclined  to  believe  that  he  never  had  a 

O 

regular  fixed  plan  of  the  kind.  But  we  are  also  inclined  to 
think  that  the  project  entered  into  his  mind,  with  various 
other  ideas  and  plans  more  or  less  vague,  and  that  circum- 
stances might  have  developed  it  into  an  actual  scheme. 
Louis  Napoleon  was,  above  all  things,  a  man  of  ideas  in  the 
inferior  sense  of  the  word  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  was  always  oc- 
cupying himself  with  vague,  dreamy  suggestions  of  plans 
that  might  in  this,  that,  or  the  other  case  be  advantageously 
pursued.  He  had  come  to  power  probably  with  the  deter- 
mination to  keep  it,  and  make  himself  acceptable  to  France 
first  of  all.  After  this  came,  doubtless,  the  sincere  desire  to 
make  France  great  and  powerful  and  prosperous.  At  first 
he  had  no  particular  notion  of  the  way  to  establish  himself 
as  a  popular  ruler,  and  it  is  certain  that  he  turned  over  all 
manner  of  plans  in  his  mind  for  the  purpose.  Among  these 
must  certainly  have  been  one  for  the  invasion  of  England 
and  the  avenging  of  Waterloo.  He  let  drop  hints  at  times 
which  showed  that  he  was  thinking  of  something  of  the 
kind.  He  talked  of  himself  as  representing  a  defeat.  He 
was  attacked  with  all  the  bitterness  of  a  not  unnatural  but 
very  unrestrained  animosity  in  the  English  press  for  his 
conduct  in  the  coup  cVetat;  and  no  doubt  lie  and  his  com- 


BIRTH  OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE   DUKE."   405 

panions  were  greatly  exasperated.  The  mood  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  French  people  was  distinctly  aggressive. 
Ashamed  to  some  degree  of  much  that  had  been  done  and 
that  they  had  had  to  suffer,  many  Frenchmen  were  in  that 
state  of  dissatisfaction  with  themselves  which  makes  people 
eager  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  some  one  else.  Had  Louis 
Napoleon  been  inclined,  he  might  doubtless  have  easily 
stirred  his  people  to  the  war  mood  ;  and  it  is  not  to  be  be- 
lieved that  he  did  not  occasionally  contemplate  the  expe- 
diency of  doing  something  of  the  kind.  Assuredly,  if  he 
had  thought  such  an  enterprise  necessary  to  the  stability  of 
his  reign,  he  would  have  risked  even  a  war  with  England. 
But  it  would  not  have  been  tried  except  as  a  last  resource ; 
and  the  need  did  not  arise.  No  one  could  have  known  bet- 
ter the  risks  of  such  an  attempt.  He  knew  England  as  his 
uncle  never  did ;  and  if  he  had  not  his  uncle's  energy  or 
military  genius,  he  had  far  more  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  of  the  relative  resources  and  capabilities  of  nations. 
He  would  not  have  done  anything  rash  without  great  ne- 
cessity, or  the  prospect  of  very  certain  benefit  in  the  event 
of  success. 

An  invasion  of  England  was  not,  therefore,  a  likely  event. 
Looking  back  composedly  now  on  what  actually  did  happen, 
we  may  safely  say  that  few  things  were  less  likely.  But  it 
was  not  by  any  means  an  impossible  event.  The  more  com- 
posedly one  looks  back  to  it  now,  the  more  he  will  be  com- 
pelled to  admit  that  it  was  at  least  on  the  cards.  The  feel- 
ing of  national  uneasiness  and  alarm  was  not  a  mere  panic. 
There  were  five  projects  with  which  public  opinion  all  over 
Europe  specially  credited  Louis  Napoleon  when  he  began 
his  imperial  reign.  One  was  a  war  with  Russia.  Another 
was  a  war  with  Austria.  A  third  was  a  war  with  Prussia. 
A  fourth  was  the  annexation  of  Belgium.  The  fifth  was  the 
invasion  of  England.  Three  of  these  projects  were  carried 
out.  The  fourth  we  know  was  in  contemplation.  Our  com- 
bination with  France  in  the  first  project  probably  put  all 
serious  thought  of  the  fifth  out  of  the  head  of  the  French 
Emperor.  He  got  far  more  prestige  out  of  an  alliance  with 
us  than  he  could  ever  have  got  out  of  any  quarrel  with  us ; 
and  he  had  little  or  no  risk.  We  do  not  count  for  anything 
the  repeated  assurances  of  Louis  Napoleon  that  he  desired 


406  A  HISTORY   OP  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

above  all  things  to  be  on  friendly  terms  with  England. 
These  assurances  were  doubtless  sincere  at  the  moment 
when  they  were  made,  and  under  the  circumstances  of  that 
moment.  But  altered  circumstances  might  at  any  time 
have  induced  an  altered  frame  of  mind.  The  very  same  as- 
surances were  made  again  and  again  to  Russia,  to  Austria, 
and  to  Prussia.  The  pledge  that  the  Empire  was  peace  was 
addressed,  like  the  Pope's  edict,  ^lrbi  et  orbi. 

Therefore  we  do  not  look  upon  the  mood  of  England  in 
1852  as  one  of  idle  and  baseless  panic.  The  same  feeling 
broke  into  life  again  in  1859,  when  the  Emperor  of  the 
French  suddenly  announced  his  determination  to  go  to  war 
with  Austria.  It  was  in  this  latter  period,  indeed,  that  the 
Volunteer  movement  became  a  great  national  organization, 
and  that  the  Laureate  did  his  best  to  rouse  it  into  activity 
in  the  verses  of  hardly  doubtful  merit  to  which  we  have 
already  referred.  But  in  1852  the  beginning  of  an  army  of 
volunteers  was  made,  and,  what  is  of  more  importance  to 
the  immediate  business  of  our  history,  the  Government  de- 
termined to  bring  in  a  bill  for  the  reorganization  of  the  na- 
tional militia. 

Our  militia  was  not  in  any  case  a  body  to  be  particularly 
proud  of  at  that  time.  It  had  fallen  into  decay,  and  almost 
into  disorganization.  Nothing  could  have  been  a  more 
proper  work  for  any  Government  than  its  restoration  to 
efficiency  and  respectability.  Nothing,  too,  could  have  been 
more  timely  than  a  measure  to  make  it  efficient  in  view  of 
the  altered  condition  of  European  aifairs  and  the  increased 
danger  of  disturbance  at  home  and  abroad.  We  had  on  our 
hands  at  the  time,  too,  one  of  our  little  wars — a  Caffre  war, 
which  was  protracted  to  a  vexatious  length,  and  which  was 
not  without  serious  military  difficulty.  It  began  in  the  De- 
cember of  1850,  and  was  not  completely  disposed  of  before 
the  early  part  of  1853.  We  could  not,  therefore,  afford  to 
have  our  defences  in  any  defective  condition,  and  no  labor 
was  more  fairly  incumbent  on  a  Government  than  the  task 
of  making  them  adequate  to  their  purpose.  But  it  was  an 
unfortunate  characteristic  of  Lord  John  Russell's  Govern- 
ment that  it  attempted  so  much  legislation,  not  because 
some  particular  scheme  commended  itself  to  tlie  mature 
wisdom  of  the  ministry,  but  because  something  had  to  be 


BIRTH  OF  THE  EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE  DUKE."   407 

done  in  a  hurry  to  satisfy  public  opinion  ;  and  the  Govern- 
ment could  not  think  of  anything  better  at  the  moment 
than  the  first  scheme  that  came  to  hand.  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell, accordingly,  introduced  a  Militia  Bill,  which  was  in  the 
highest  degree  inadequate  and  unsatisfactory.  The  princi- 
pal peculiarity  of  it  was  that  it  proposed  to  substitute  a 
local  militia  for  the  regular  force  that  had  been  in  existence. 
Lord  Palmerston  saw  great  objections  to  this  alteration,  and 
urged  them  with  much  briskness  and  skill  on  the  night 
when  Lord  John  Russell  explained  his  measure.  When 
Palmerston  began  his  speech,  he  probably  intended  to  be 
merely  critical  as  regarded  points  in  the  measure  which 
were  susceptible  of  amendment ;  but  as  he  went  on  he 
found  moime  and  more  that  he  had  the  House  with  him. 
Every  objection  he  made,  every  criticism  he  urged,  almost 
every  sentence  he  spoke,  drew  down  increasing  cheers. 
Lord  Palmerston  saw  that  the  House  was  not  only  thor- 
oughly with  him  on  this  ground,  but  thoroughly  against  the 
Government  on  various  grounds.  A  few  nights  after  he 
followed  up  his  first  success  by  proposing  a  resolution  to 
substitute  the  word  "regular"  for  the  word  "local"  in  the 
bill;  thus, in  fact,  to  reconstruct  the  bill  on  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent principle  from  that  adopted  by  its  framer.  The  eifort 
was  successful.  The  Peelites  went  with  Palmerston;  the 
Protectionists  followed  him  as  well;  and  the  result  was  that 
136  votes  were  given  for  the  amendment,  and  only  125 
against  it.  The  Government  were  defeated  by  a  majority 
of  eleven.  Lord  John  Russell  instantly  announced  that  he 
could  no  longer  continue  in  office,  as  he  did  not  possess  the 
confidence  of  the  country. 

The  announcement  took  the  House  by  surprise.  Lord 
Palmerston  had  not  himself  expected  any  such  result  from 
his  resolution.  There  was  no  reason  why  the  Government 
should  not  have  amended  their  bill  on  the  basis  of  the  reso- 
lution passed  by  the  House.  The  country  wanted  a  scheme 
of  efficient  defence,  and  the  Government  were  only  called 
upon  to  make  their  scheme  efficient.  But  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell was  well  aware  that  his  Administration  had  been  losing 
its  authority  little  by  little.  Since  the  time  when  it  had  re- 
turned to  power,  simply  because  no  one  could  form  a  minis- 
try any  stronger  than  itself,  it  had  been  only  a  Government 


408  A  HISTORY   OF   OUli   OWN   TIMES. 

on  sufferance.  Ministers  who  assume  office  in  that  stop-gap 
way  seldom  retain  it  long  in  England.  The  Gladstone  Gov- 
ernment illustrated  this  fact  in  1873,  when  they  consented 
to  return  to  office  because  Mr.  Disraeli  was  not  then  in  a 
condition  to  come  in,  and  were  dismissed  by  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority  at  the  elections  in  the  following  spring.  Lord 
( Palmerston  assigned  one  special  reason  for  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell's promptness  in  resigning  on  the  change  in  the  Militia 
Bill.  The  great  motive  for  the  step  was,  according  to  Palm- 
erston^" the  fear  of  being  defeated  on  the  vote  of  censure 
about  the  Cape  affairs,  which  was  to  have  been  moved  to- 
day ;  as  it  is,  the  late  Government  have  gone  out  on  a  ques- 
tion which  they  have  treated  as  a  motion,  merely  asserting 
that  they  had  lost  the  confidence  of  the  House;  whereas,  if 
they  had  gone  out  on  a  defeat  upon  the  motion  about  the 
Cape,  they  would  have  carried  with  them  the  direct  censure 
of  the  House  of  Commons."  The  letter  from  Lord  Palm- 
erston to  his  brother,  from  which  these  words  are  quoted, 
begins  with  a  remarkable  sentence:  "I  have  had  my  tit-for- 
tat  with  John  Russell,  and  I  turned  him  out  on  Friday  last." 
Palmerston  did  not  expect  any  such  result, he  declared;  but 
the  revenge  was  doubtless  sweet,  for  all  that.  This  was  in 
February,  1852  ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  December  of  the  pre- 
vious year  that  Lord  Palmerston  was  compelled  to  leave  the 
Foreign  Office  by  Lord  John  Russell.  The  same  influence, 
oddly  enough,  was  the  indirect  cause  of  both  events.  Lord 
Palmerston  lost  his  place  because  of  his  recognition  of  Louis 
Napoleon;  Lord  John  Russell  fell  from  power  while  endeav- 
oring to  introduce  a  measure  suggested  by  Louis  Napoleon's 
successful  usurpation.  It  will  be  seen  in  a  future  chapter 
how  the  influence  of  Louis  Napoleon  was  once  again  fatal  to 
each  statesman  in  turn. 

The  Russell  Ministry  had  done  little  and  initiated  less. 
It  had  carried  on  Peel's  system  by  throwing  open  the  mar- 
kets to  foreign  as  well  as  colonial  sugar,  and  by  the  repeal 
of  the  Navigation  Laws  enabled  merchants  to  employ  for- 
eign ships  and  seamen  in  the  conveyance  of  their  goods.  It 
had  made  a  mild  and  ineffectual  effort  at  a  Reform  Bill,  and 
had  feebly  favored  attempts  to  admit  Jews  to  Parliament. 
It  sank  from  power  with  an  unexpected  collapse  in  which 
the  nation  felt  small  concern. 


BIRTH   OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE  DUKE."  409 

Lord  Palraerston  did  not  come  to  power  again  at  that 
moment.  He  might  have  gone  in  with  Lord  Derby  if  he 

O  O  »' 

had  been  so  inclined.  But  Lord  Derby,  who,  it  may  be  said, 
had  succeeded  to  that  title  on  the  death  of  his  father  in  the 
preceding  year,  still  talked  of  testing  the  policy  of  Free-trade 
at  a  general  election,  and  of  course  Palmerston  was  not  dis- 
posed to  have  anything  to  do  with  such  a  proposition.  Nor 
had  Palmerston  in  any  case  much  inclination  to  serve  under 
Derby,  of  whose  political  intelligence  he  thought  poorly,  and 
whom  he  regarded  principally  as  what  he  called  "a  flashy 
speaker."  Lord  Derby  tried  various  combinations  in  vain, 
and  at  last  had  to  experiment  with  a  cabinet  of  undiluted 
Protectionists.  He  had  to  take  office,  not  because  he  want- 
ed it,  or  because  any  one  in  particular  wanted  him,  but  sim- 
ply and  solely  because  there  was  no  one  else  who  could  un- 
dertake the  task.  He  formed  a  cabinet  to  carry  on  the  bus- 
iness of  the  country  for  the  moment,  and  until  it  should  be 
convenient  to  have  a  general  election,  when  he  fondly  hoped 
that  by  some  inexplicable  process  a  Protectionist  reaction 
would  be  brought  about,  and  he  should  find  himself  at  the 
head  of  a  strong  administration. 

The  ministry  which  Lord  Derby  was  able  to  form  was  not 
a  strong  one.  Lord  Palmerston  described  it  as  containing 
two  men  of  mark,  Derby  and  Disraeli,  and  a  number  of  ci- 
phers. It  had  not,  except  for  these  two,  a  single  man  of  any 
political  ability,  and  had  hardly  one  of  any  political  experi- 
ence. It  had  an  able  lawyer  for  Lord  Chancellor,  Lord  St. 
Leonards,  but  he  was  nothing  of  a  politician.  The  rest  of 
the  members  of  the  Government  were  respectable  country 
gentlemen.  One  of  them,  Mr.  Herries,  had  been  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer  in  a  short-lived  Government,  that  of  Lord 
Goderich,  in  1827;  and  he  had  held  the  office  of  Secretary 
of  War  for  a  few  months  some  time  later.  He  was  forgot- 
ten by  the  existing  generation  of  politicians,  and  the  gen- 
eral public  only  knew  that  he  was  still  living  when  they 
heard  of  his  accession  to  Lord  Derby's  Government.  The 
Earl  of  Malmesbury,  Sir  John  Pakington,  Mr.  Walpole,  Mr. 
Henley,  and  the  rest,  were  men  whose  antecedents  scarcely 
gave  them  warrant  for  any  higher  claim  in  public  life  than 
the  position  of  chairman  of  quarter-sessions ;  nor  did  their 
subsequent  career  in  office  contribute  much  to  establish  a 

I.— 18 


410  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

loftier  estimate  of  their  capacity.  The  head  of  the  Govern- 
ment was  remarkable  for  his  dashing  blunders  as  a  politician, 
quite  as  much  as  for  his  dashing  eloquence.  His  new  lieu- 
tenant, Mr.  Disraeli,  had  in  former  days  christened  him,  very 
happily,  "  The  Rupert  of  Debate,"  after  that  fiery  and  gal- 
lant prince  whose  blunders  generally  lost  the  battles  which 
his  headlong  courage  had  nearly  won. 

Concerning  Mr.  Disraeli  himself  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  many  of  his  own  party  were  rather  more  afraid  of  his 
genius  than  of  the  dulness  of  any  of  his  colleagues.  It  is 
not  a  pleasant  task,  in  the  best  of  circumstances,  to  be  at  the 
head  of  a  tolerated  ministry  in  the  House  of  Commons :  a 
ministry  which  is  in  a  minority,  and  only  holds  its  place  be- 
cause there  is  no  one  ready  to  relieve  it  of  the  responsibility 
of  office.  Mr.  Disraeli  himself,  at  a  much  later  date,  gave  the 
House  of  Commons  an  amusing  picture  of  the  trials  and  hu- 
miliations which  await  the  leader  of  such  a  forlorn  hope. 
He  had  now  to  assume  that  position  without  any  previous 
experience  of  office.  Rarely,  indeed,  is  the  leadership  of  the 
House  of  Commons  undertaken  by  any  one  who  has  not  pre- 
viously held  office ;  and  Mr.  Disraeli  entered  upon  leader- 
ship and  office  at  the  same  moment  for  the  first  time.  He 
became  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  and  leader  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  Among  the  many  gifts  with  which 
he  was  accredited  by  fame,  not  a  single  admirer  had  hither- 
to dreamed  of  including  a  capacity  for  the  mastery  of  fig- 
ures. In  addition  to  all  the  ordinary  difficulties  of  the  min- 
istry of  a  minority,  there  was,  in  this  instance,  the  difficul- 
ty arising  from  the  obscurity  and  inexperience  of  nearly  all 
its  members.  Facetious  persons  dubbed  the  new  adminis- 
tration the  "Who?  Who?  Ministry."  The  explanation  of 
this  odd  nickname  was  found  in  a  story  then  in  circulation 
about  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  The  Duke,  it  was  said,  was 
anxious  to  hear  from  Lord  Derby  at  the  earliest  moment  all 
about  the  composition  of  his  cabinet.  He  was  overheard 
asking  the  new  Prime-minister  in  the  House  of  Lords  the 
names  of  his  intended  colleagues.  The  Duke  wras  rather 
deaf,  and,  like  most  deaf  persons,  spoke  in  very  loud  tones, 
and  of  course  had  to  be  answered  in  tones  also  rather  ele- 
vated. That  which  was  meant  for  a  whispered  conversation 
became  audible  to  the  whole  House.  As  Lord  Derby  men- 


BIRTH  OF  THE  EMPIRE;    DEATH  OF  "THE   DUKE."   411 

tioned  each  name,  the  Duke  asked  in  wonder  and  eagerness, 
"Who?  Who?"  After  each  new  name  came  the  same  in- 
quiry. The  Duke  of  Wellington  had  clearly  never  heard  of 
most  of  the  new  ministers  before.  The  story  went  about : 
and  Lord  Derby's  Administration  was  familiarly  known  as 
the  "Who?  Who?  Government." 

Lord  Derby  entered  office  with  the  avowed  intention  of 
testing  the  Protection  question  all  over  again ;  but  he  was 
no  sooner  in  office  than  he  found  that  the  bare  suggestion 
had  immensely  increased  his  difficulties.  The  formidable 
organization  which  had  worked  the  Free-trade  cause  so  suc- 
cessfully seemed  likely  to  come  into  political  life  again  with 
all  its  old  vigor.  The  Free-traders  began  to  stand  together 
again  the  moment  Lord  Derby  gave  his  unlucky  hint.  Ev- 
ery week  that  passed  over  his  head  did  something  to  show 
him  the  mistake  he  had  made  when  he  hampered  himself 
with  any  such  undertaking  as  the  revival  of  the  Protection 
question.  Some  of  his  colleagues  had  been  unhappily  and 
blunderingly  outspoken  in  their  addresses  to  their  constitu- 
ents seeking  for  re-election,  and  had  talked  as  if  the  restora- 
tion of  Protection  itself  were  the  grand  object  of  Lord  Der- 
by's taking  office.  The  new  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
had  been  far  more  cautious.  He  only  talked  vaguely  of 
"  those  remedial  measures  which  great  productive  interests, 
suffering  from  unequal  taxation,  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
a  just  Government."  In  truth,  Mr.  Disraeli  was  well  con- 
vinced at  this  time  of  the  hopelessness  of  any  agitation  for 
the  restoration  of  Protection,  and  would  have  been  only  too 
glad  of  any  opportunity  for  a  complete  and  at  the  same 
time  a  safe  disavowal  of  any  sympathy  with  such  a  project. 
The  Government  found  their  path  bristling  with  troubles, 
created  for  them  by  their  own  mistake  in  giving  any  hint 
about  the  demand  for  a  new  trial  of  the  Free-trade  question. 
Any  chance  they  might  otherwise  have  had  of  making  effec- 
tive head  against  their  very  trying  difficulties  was  complete- 
ly cut  away  from  them. 

The  Free -trade  League  was  reorganized.  A  conference 
of  Liberal  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  was  held  at 
the  residence  of  Lord  John  Russell  ,in  Chesharn  Place,  at 
which  it  was  resolved  to  extract  or  extort  from  the  Govern- 
ment a  full  avowal  of  their  policy  with  regard  to  Protection 


412  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

and  Free-trade.  The  feat  would  have  been  rather  difficult 
of  accomplishment,  seeing  that  the  Government  had  abso- 
lutely no  policy  to  offer  on  the  subject,  and  were  only  hop- 
ing to  be  able  to  consult  the  country  as  one  might  consult 
an  oracle.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  when  he  made 
his  financial  statement,  accepted  the  increased  prosperity  of 
the  few  years  preceding  with  an  unction  which  showed  that 
he,  at  least,  had  no  particular  notion  of  attempting  to  reverse 
the  policy  which  had  so  greatly  contributed  to  its  progress. 
Mr.  Disraeli  pleased  the  Peelites  and  the  Liberals  much 
more  by  his  statement  than  he  pleased  his  chief  or  many  of 
his  followers.  His  speech,  indeed,  was  very  clever.  A  new 
financial  scheme  he  could  not  produce,  for  he  had  not  had 
time  to  make  anything  like  a  complete  examination  of  the 
finances  of  the  country ;  but  he  played  very  prettily  and 
skilfully  with  the  facts  and  figures,  and  conveyed  to  the 
listeners  the  idea  of  a  man  who  could  do  wonderful  things 
in  finance  if  he  only  had  a  little  time  and  were  in  the  humor. 
Every  one  outside  the  limits  of  the  extreme  and  unconverted 
Protectionists  was  pleased  with  the  success  of  his  speech. 
People  were  glad  that  one  who  had  proved  himself  so  clever 
with  many  things  should  have  shown  himself  equal  to  the 
uncongenial  and  unwonted  task  of  dealing  with  dry  facts 
and  figures.  The  House  felt  that  he  was  placed  in  a  very 
trying  position,  and  was  well  pleased  to  see  him  hold  his 
own  so  successfully  in  it. 

Mr.  Disraeli  merely  proposed  in  his  financial  statement  to 
leave  things  as  he  found  them ;  to  continue  the  income-tax 
for  another  year,  as  a  pi'ovisional  arrangement  pending  that 
complete  re-examination  of  the  financial  affairs  of  the  coun- 
try to  which  he  intimated  that  he  found  himself  quite  equal 
at  the  proper  time.  No  one  could  suggest  any  better 
course ;  and  the  new  Chancellor  came  off,  on  the  whole, 
with  flying  colors.  His  very  difficulties  had  been  a  source 
of  advantage  to  him.  He  was  not  expected  to  produce  a 
financial  scheme  at  such  short  notice;  and  if  he  was  not 
equal  to  a  financier's  task,  it  did  not  so  appear  on  this  first 
occasion  of  trial.  The  Government,  on  the  whole,  did  not 
do  so  badly  during  this  period  of  their  probation.  They  in- 
troduced and  carried  a  Militia  Bill,  for  which  they  obtained 
the  cordial  support  of  Lord  Palmerston;  and  they  gave  a 


BIRTH   OF   THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE   DUKE."   413 

Constitution  to  New  Zealand  ;  and  then,  in  the  beginning 
of  July,  the  Parliament  was  prorogued  and  the  dissolution 
took  place.  The  elections  were  signalized  by  very  serious 
riots  in  many  parts  of  the  country.  In  Ireland,  particularly, 
party  passions  ran  high.  The  landlords  and  the  police  were 
on  one  side  ;  the  priests  and  the  popular  party  on  the  other ; 
and  in  several  places  there  was  some  bloodshed.  It  was  not 
in  Ireland,  however,  a  question  about  Free-trade  or  Protec- 
tion. The  great  mass  of  the  Irish  people  knew  nothing 
about  Mr.  Disraeli — probably  had  never  heard  his  name, 
and  did  not  care  who  led  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
question  which  agitated  the  Irish  constituencies  was  that  of 
Tenant-right,  in  the  first  instance ;  and  the  time  had  not  yet 
arrived  when  a  great  minister  from  either  party  was  pre- 
pared to  listen  to  their  demands  on  this  subject.  There 
was  also  much  bitterness  of  feeling  remaining  from  the  dis- 
cussions on  the  Ecclesiastical  Titles  Bill.  But  it  may  be 
safely  said  that  not  one  of  the  questions  that  stirred  up 
public  feeling  in  England  had  the  slightest  popular  interest 
in  Ireland,  and  the  question  which  the  Irish  people  consid- 
ered essential  to  their  very  existence  did  not  enter  for  one 
moment  into  the  struggles  that  were  going  on  all  over 
England. 

The  speeches  of  ministers  in  England  showed  the  same 
lively  diversity  as  before  on  the  subject  of  Protection.  Mr. 
Disraeli  not  only  threw  Protection  overboard,  but  boldly 
declared  that  no  one  could  have  supposed  the  ministry  had 
the  slightest  intention  of  proposing  to  bring  back  the  laws 
that  were  repealed  in  1846.  In  fact  the  time,  he  declared, 
had  gone  by  when  such  exploded  politics  could  even  interest 
the  people  of  this  country.  On  the  other  hand,  several  of 
Mr.  Disraeli's  colleagues  evidently  spoke  in  the  fulness  of 
their  simple  faith  that  Lord  Derby  was  bent  on  setting  up 
again  the  once  beloved  and  not  yet  forgotten  protective 
system.  But  from  the  time  of  the  elections  nothing  more 
was  heard  about  Protection,  or  about  the  possibility  of  get- 
ting a  new  trial  for  its  principles.  The  elections  did  little 
or  nothing  for  the  Government.  The  dreams  of  a  strength- 

o  O 

ened  party  at  their  back  were  gone.  They  gained  a  little, 
just  enough  to  make  it  unlikely  that  any  one  would  move  a 
vote  of  want  of  confidence  at  the  very  outset  of  their  reap- 


414  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

pearance  before  Parliament,  but  not  nearly  enough  to  give 
them  a  chance  of  carrying  any  measure  which  could  really 
propitiate  the  Conservative  party  throughout  the  country. 
They  were  still  to  be  the  ministry  of  a  minority — a  ministry 
on  sufferance.  They  were  a  ministry  on  sufferance  when 
they  appealed  to  the  country,  but  they  were  able  to  say 
then  that  when  their  cause  had  been  heard  the  country 
would  declare  for  them.  They  now  came  back  to  be  a  min- 
istry on  sufferance,  who  had  made  the  appeal  and  had  seen 
it  rejected.  It  was  plain  to  every  one  that  their  existence 
as  a  ministry  was  only  a  question  of  days.  Speculation  was 
already  busy  as  to  their  successors ;  and  it  was  evident  that 
a  new  Government  could  only  be  formed  by  some  sort  of 
coalition  between  the  Whigs  and  the  Peelites. 

Among  the  noteworthy  events  of  the  general  elections 
was  the  return  of  Macaulay  to  the  House  of  Commons. 
Edinburgh  elected  him  in  a  manner  particularly  compli- 
mentary to  him  and  honorable  to  herself.  He  was  elected 
without  his  solicitation,  without  his  putting  himself  forward 
as  a  candidate,  Without  his  making  any  profession  of  faith, 
or  doing  any  of  the  things  that  the  most  independent  can- 
didate was  then  expected  to  do ;  and,  in  fact,  in  spite  of  his 
positive  declaration -that  he  would  do  nothing  to  court  elec- 
tion. He  had  for  some  years  been  absent  from  Parliament. 
Some  difference  had  arisen  between  him  and  certain  of  his 
constituents  on  the  subject  of  the  Maynooth  grant.  Com- 
plaints, too,  had  been  made  by  Edinburgh  constituents  of 
Macaulay's  lack  of  attention  to  local  interests,  and  of  the 
intellectual  scorn  which,  as  they  believed,  he  exhibited  in 
his  intercourse  with  many  of  those  who  had  supported  him. 
The  result  of  this  was,  that  at  the  general  election  of  1847 
Macaulay  was  left  third  on  the  poll  at  Edinburgh.  He  felt 
this  deeply.  He  might  have  easily  found  some  other  con- 
stituency; but  his  wounded  pride  hastened  a  resolution  he 
had  for  some  time  been  forming  to  retire  to  a  life  of  private 
literary  labor.  He  therefore  remained  out  of  Parliament. 
In  1852  the  movement  of  Edinburgh  toward  him  was  en- 
tirely spontaneous.  Edinburgh  was  anxious  to  atone  for 
the  error  of  which  she  had  been  guilty.  Macaulay  would 
go  no  farther  than  to  say  that  if  Edinburgh  spontaneous- 
ly elected  him  he  should  deem  it  a  very  high  honor,  and 


BIRTH   OF   THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE   DUKE."    415 

"should  not  feel  myself  justified  in  refusing  to  accept  a 
public  trust  offered  to  me  in  a  manner  so  honorable  and 
so  peculiar."  But  he  would  not  do  anything  whatever  to 
court  favor.  He  did  not  want  to  be  elected  to  Parliament, 
he  said ;  he  was  very  happy  in  his  retirement.  Edinburgh 
elected  him  on  those  terms.  He  was  not  long  allowed  by 
his  health  to  serve  her;  but  so  long  as  he  remained  in  the 
House  of  Commons  it  was  as  member  for  Edinburgh. 

On  September  14th,  1852,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  died. 
His  end  was  singularly  peaceful.  He  fell  quietly  asleep 
about  a  quarter-past  three  in  the  afternoon  in  Walmer  Cas- 
tle, and  he  did  not  wake  any  more.  He  was  a  very  old 
man — in  his  eighty-fourth  year — and  his  death  had  natural- 
ly been  looked  for  as  an  event  certain  to  come  soon.  Yet 
when  it  did  come  thus  naturally  and  peacefully,  it  created 
a  profound  public  emotion.  No  other  man  in  our  time  ever 
held  the  position  in  England  which  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
had  occupied  for  more  than  a  whole  generation.  The  place 
he  had  won  for  himself  was  absolutely  unique.  His  great 
deeds  belonged  to  a  past  time.  He  was  hardly  anything 
of  a  statesman ;  he  knew  little  and  cared  less  about  what 
may  be  called  states-craft ;  and  as  an  administrator  he  had 
made  many  mistakes.  But  the  trust  which  the  nation  had 
in  him  as  a  counsellor  was  absolutely  unlimited.  It  never 
entered  into  the  mind  of  any  one  to  suppose  that  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  was  actuated  in  any  step  he  took,  or  advice 
he  gave,  by  any  feeling  but  a  desire  for  the  good  of  the 
State.  His  loyalty  to  the  Sovereign  had  something  antique 
and  touching  in  it.  There  was  a  blending  of  personal  affec- 
tion with  the  devotion  of  a  state  servant  which  lent  a  cer- 
tain romantic  dignity  to  the  demeanor  and  character  of  one 
who  otherwise  had  but  little  of  the  poetical  or  the  senti- 
mental in  his  nature.  In  the  business  of  politics  he  had  but 
one  pi'evailing  anxiety,  and  that  was  that  the  Queen's  Gov- 
ernment should  be  satisfactorily  carried  on.  He  gave  up 
again  and  again  his  own  most  cherished  convictions,  most 
ingrained  prejudices,  in  order  that  he  might  not  stand  in 
the  way  of  the  Queen's  Government,  and  the  proper  carry- 
ing of  it  on.  This  simple  fidelity,  sometimes  rather  whim- 
sically displayed,  stood  him  often  in  stead  of  an  exalted 
statesmanship,  and  enabled  him  to  extricate  the  Government 


416  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

and  the  nation  from  difficulties  in  which  a  political  insight 
far  more  keen  than  his  might  have  failed  to  prove  a  guide. 

It  was  for  this  true  and  tried,  this  simple  and  unswerving 
devotion  to  the  national  good,  that  the  people  of  England 
admired  and  revered  him.  He  had  not  what  would  be  called 
a  lovable  temperament,  and  yet  the  nation  loved  him.  He 
was  cold  and  brusque  in  manner,  and  seemed  in  general  to 
have  hardly  a  gleam  of  the  emotional  in  him.  This  was 
not  because  he  lacked  affections.  On  the  contrary,  his  affec- 
tions and  his  friendships  were  warm  and  enduring ;  and 
even  in  public  he  had  more  than  once  given  way  to  out- 
bursts of  emotion  such  as  a  stranger  would  never  have  ex- 
pected from  one  of  that  cold  and  rigid  demeanor.  When 
Sir  Robert  Peel  died,  Wellington  spoke  of  him  in  the  House 
of  Lords  with  the  tears,  which  he  did  not  even  try  to  control, 
running  down  his  cheeks.  But  in  his  ordinary  bearing  there 
was  little  of  the  manner  that  makes  a  man  a  popular  idol. 
He  was  not  brilliant  or  dashing,  or  emotional  or  graceful; 
he  was  dry,  cold,  self-contained.  Yet  the  people  loved  him 
and  trusted  in  him;  loved  him  perhaps  especially  because 
they  so  trusted  in  him.  No  face  and  figure  were  better 
known  at  one  time  to  the  population  of  London  than  those 
of  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  Of  late  his  form  had  grown 

O  O 

stooped,  and  he  bent  over  his  horse  as  he  rode  in  the  Park 
or  down  Whitehall  like  one  who  could  hardly  keep  himself 
in  the  saddle.  Yet  he  mounted  his  horse  to  the  last,  and  in- 
deed could  keep  in  the  saddle  after  he  had  ceased  to  be  able 
to  sit  erect  in  an  arm-chair.  He  sometimes  rode  in  a  curi- 
ous little  cab  of  his  own  devising  ;  but  his  favorite  way  of 
going  about  London  was  on  the  back  of  his  horse.  He  was 
called,  par  excellence,  "  the  Duke."  The  London  working- 
man  who  looked  up  as  he  went  to  or  from  his  work  and 
caught  a  sight  of  the  bowed  figure  on  the  horse,  took  off  his 
hat  and  told  some  passer-by,  "  There  goes  the  Duke  !"  His 
victories  belonged  to  the  past.  They  were  but  traditions 
even  to  middle-aged  men  in  "  the  Duke's  "  later  years.  But 
he  was  regarded  still  as  an  embodiment  of  the  national 
heroism  and  success — a  modern  St.  George  in  a  tightly-but- 
toned frock-coat  and  white  trousers. 

Wellington  belonged  so  much  to  the  past  at  the  time  of 
his  death,  that  it  seems  hardly  in  place  here  to  say  anything 


BIRTH   OF   THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE   DUKE."   417 

about  his  character  as  a  soldier.  But  it  may  be  remarked 
that  his  success  was  due  in  great  measure  to  a  sort  of  in- 
spired common-sense  which  rose  to  something  like  genius. 
He  had  in  the  highest  conceivable  degree  the  art  of  winning 
victories.  In  war,  as  in  statesmanship,  he  had  one  charac- 
teristic which  is  said  to  have  been  the  special  gift  of  Julius 
Caesar,  and  for  the  lack  of  which  Caesar's  greatest  modern 
rival  in  the  art  of  conquest,  the  first  Napoleon,  lost  all,  or 
nearly  all,  that  he  had  won.  Wellington  not  only  under- 
stood what  could  be  done,  but  also  what  could  not  be  done. 
The  wild  schemes  of  almost  universal  rule  which  set  Napo- 
leon astray  and  led  him  to  his  destruction  would  have  ap- 
peared to  the  strong  common-sense  of  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton as  impossible  and  absurd  as  they  would  have  looked  to 
the  lofty  intelligence  of  Caesar.  It  can  hardly  be  questioned 
that  in  original  genius  Napoleon  far  surpassed  the  Duke  of 
Wellington.  But  Wellington  always  knew  exactly  what 
he  could  do,  and  Napoleon  often  confounded  his  ambitions 
with  his  capacities.  Wellington  provided  for  everything, 
looked  after  everything ;  never  trusted  to  his  star  or  to 
chance,  or  to  anything  but  care  and  preparation,  and  the 
proper  application  of  means  to  ends.  Under  almost  any 
conceivable  conditions,  Wellington,  pitted  against  Napoleon, 
was  the  man  to  win  in  the  end.  The  very  genius  of  Napo- 
leon would  sooner  or  later  have  left  him  open  to  the  nn- 
sleeping  watchfulness,  the  almost  infallible  judgment,  of 
Wellington. 

He  was  as  fortunate  as  he  was  deserving.  No  man  could 
have  drunk  more  deeply  of  the  cup  of  fame  and  fortune  than 
Wellington ;  and  he  was  never  for  one  moment  intoxicated 
by  it.  After  all  his  long  wars  and  his  splendid  victories  he 
had  some  thirty-seven  years  of  peace  and  glory  to  enjoy. 
He  held  the  loftiest  position  in  this  country  that  any  man 
not  a  sovereign  could  hold,  and  he  ranked  far  higher  in  the 
estimation  of  his  countrymen  than  most  of  their  sovereigns 
have  done.  The  rescued  emper6rs  and  kings  of  Europe  had 
showered  their  honors  on  him.  His  fame  was  as  complete- 
ly secured  during  his  lifetime  as  if  death,  by  removing  him 
from  the  possibility  of  making  a  mistake,  had  consecrated  it. 
No  new  war  under  altered  conditions  tried  the  flexibility 
and  the  endurance  of  the  military  genius  which  had  defeated 

18* 


418  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

in  turn  all  Napoleon's  great  marshals  as  a  prelude  to  the 
defeat  of  Napoleon  himself.  If  ever  any  mortal  may  be 
said  to  have  had  in  life  all  he  could  have  desired,  Welling- 
ton was  surely  that  man.  He  might  have  found  a  new  con- 
tentment in  his  honors,  if  he  really  cared  much  about  them, 
in  the  reflection  that  he  had  done  nothing  for  himself,  but 
all  for  the  State.  He  did  not  love  war.  He  had  no  inclina- 
tion whatever  for  it.  When  Lord  John  Russell  visited  Na- 
poleon in  Elba,  Napoleon  asked  him  whether  he  thought 
the  Duke  of  Wellington  would  be  able  to  live  thencefor- 
ward without  the  excitement  of  war.  It  was  probably  in 
Napoleon's  mind  that  the  English  soldier  would  be  constant- 
ly entangling  his  country  in  foreign  complications  for  the 
sake  of  gratifying  his  love  for  the  brave  squares  of  war. 
Lord  John  Russell  endeavored  to  impress  upon  the  great 
fallen  Emperor  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington  would,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  lapse  into  the  place  of  a  simple  citizen,  and 
would  look  with  no  manner  of  regret  to  the  stormy  days 
of  battle.  Napoleon  seems  to  have  listened  with  a  sort 
of  melancholy  incredulity,  and  only  observed  once  or  twice 
that  "  it  was  a  splendid  game,  war."  To  Wellington  it  was 
no  splendid  game,  or  game  of  any  sort.  It  was  a  stern  duty 
to  be  done  for  his  Sovereign  and  his  country,  and  to  be  got 
through  as  quickly  as  possible.  The  difference  between  the 
two  men  cannot  be  better  illustrated.  It  is  impossible  to 
compare  two  such  men.  There  is  hardly  any  common  basis 
of  comparison.  To  say  which  is  the  greater,  one  must  first 
make  up  his  mind  as  to  whether  his  standard  of  greatness  is 
genius  or  duty.  Napoleon  has  made  a  far  deeper  impression 
on  history.  If  that  be  superior  greatness,  it  would  be  scarce- 
ly possible  for  any  national  partiality  to  claim  an  equal 
place  for  Wellington.  But  Englishmen  may  be  content 
with  the  reflection  that  their  hero  saved  his  country,  and 
that  Napoleon  nearly  ruined  his.  We  write  this  without 
the  slightest  inclination  to  sanction  what  may  be  called  the 
British  Philistine  view  of  the  character  of  Napoleon.  Up 
to  a  certain  period  of  his  career  it  seems  to  us  deserving  of 
almost  unmingled  admiration ;  just  as  his  country,  in  her 
earlier  disputes  with  the  other  European  Powers,  seems  to 
have  been  almost  entirely  in  the  right.  But  his  success  and 
his  glory  were  too  strong  for  Napoleon.  He  fell  for  the 


BIRTH   OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH  OF  "THE   DUKE."   419 

1 

very  want  of  that  simple,  steadfast  devotion  to  duty  which 
inspired  Wellington  always,  and  which  made  him  seem 
dignified  and  great,  even  in  statesmanship  for  which  he  was 
unfitted,  and  even  when  in  statesmanship  he  was  acting  in 
a  manner  that  would  have  made  another  man  seem  ridic- 
ulous rather  than  respectable.  Wellington  more  nearly 
resembled  Washington  than  Napoleon.  He  was  a  much 
greater  soldier  than  Washington ;  but  he  was  not,  on  the 
whole,  so  great  a  man. 

It  is  fairly  to  be  said  for  Wellington  that  the  proportions 
of  his  personal  greatness  seem  to  grow  rather  than  to  dwin- 
dle as  he  and  his  events  are  removed  from  us  by  time.  The 
battle  of  Waterloo  does  not  indeed  stand,  as  one  of  its  his- 
torians has  described  it,  among  the  decisive  battles  of  the 
world.  It  was  fought  to  keep  the  Bonapartes  off  the  throne 
of  France ;  and  in  twenty-five  years  after  Waterloo,  while 
the  victor  of  Waterloo  was  yet  living,  another  Bonaparte 
wras  preparing  to  mount  that  throne.  It  was  the  climax  of 
a  national  policy  which,  however  justifiable  and  inevitable 
it  may  have  become  in  the  end,  would  hardly  now  be  justi- 
fied as  to  its  origin  by  one  intelligent  Englishman  out  of 
twenty.  The  present  age  is  not,  therefore,  likely  to  become 
rhapsodical  over  Wellington,  as  our  forefathers  might  have 
been,  merely  because  he  defeated  the  French  and  crushed 
Napoleon.  Yet  it  is  impossible  for  the  coolest  mind  to 
study  the  career  of  Wellington  without  feeling  a  constant 
glow  of  admiration  for  that  singular  course  of  simple  an- 
tique devotion  to  duty.  His  was  truly  the  spirit  in  which 
a  great  nation  must  desire  to  be  served. 

The  nation  was  not  ungrateful.  It  heaped  honors  on  Wel- 
lington ;  it  would  have  heaped  more  on  him  if  it  knew  how. 
It  gave  him  its  almost  unqualified  admiration.  On  his  death 
it  tried  to  give  him  such  a  public  funeral  as  hero  never  had. 
The  pageant  was,  indeed,  a  splendid  and  a  gorgeous  exhibi- 
tion. It  was  not,  perhaps,  very  well  suited  to  the  tempera- 
ment and  habits  of  the  cold  and  simple  hero  to  whose  hon- 
or it  was  got  up.  Nor,  perhaps,  are  gorgeous  pageants  ex- 
actly the  sort  of  performance  in  which,  as  a  nation,  England 
particularly  excels.  But  in  the  vast,  silent,  respectful  crowd 
that  thronged  the  London  streets — a  crowd  such  as  no  other 
city  in  the  world  could  show  —  there  was  better  evidence 


420  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

than  pageantry  or  ceremonial  could  supply  of  the  esteem  in 
which  the  living  generation  held  the  hero  of  the  last.  The 
name  of  Wellington  had  long  ceased  to  represent  any  hos- 
tility of  nation  to  nation.  The  crowds  who  filled  the  streets 
of  London  that  day  had  no  thought  of  the  kind  of  sentiment 
which  used  to  fill  the  breasts  of  their  fathers  when  France 
and  Napoleon  were  named.  They  honored  Wellington  only 
as  one  who  had  always  served  his  country ;  as  the  soldier 
of  England  and  not  as  the  invader  of  France,  or  even  as  the 
conqueror  of  Napoleon.  The  homage  to  his  memory  was  as 
pure  of  selfish  passion  as  his  own  career. 

The  new  Parliament  was  called  together  in  November. 
It  brought  into  public  life  in  England  a  man  who  afterward 
made  some  mark  in  our  politics,  and  whose  intellect  and  de- 
bating power  seemed  at  one  time  to  promise  him  a  position 
inferior  to  that  of  hardly  any  one  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
This  was  Mr.  Robert  Lowe,  who  had  returned  from  one  of 
the  Australian  colonies  to  enter  political  life  in  his  native 
country.  Mr.  Lowe  was  a  scholar  of  a  highly  cultured  or- 
der; and,  despite  some  serious  defects  of  delivery,  he  proved 
to  be  a  debater  of  the  very  highest  class,  especially  gifted 
with  the  weapons  of  sarcasm,  scorn,  and  invective.  He  was 
a  Liberal  in  the  intellectual  sense;  he  was  opposed  to  all 
restraints  on  education  and  on  the  progress  of  a  career;  but 
he  had  a  detestation  for  democratic  doctrines  which  almost 
amounted  to  a  mania.  He  despised  with  the  whole  force  of 
a  temperament  very  favorable  to  intellectual  scorn  alike  the 
rural  Tory  and  the  town  Radical.  His  opinions  were  gener- 
ally rather  negative  than  positive.  He  did  not  seem  to  have 
any  very  positive  opinions  of  any  kind  where  politics  were 
concerned.  He  was  governed  by  a  detestation  of  abstrac- 
tions and  sentimentalities,  and  "views"  of  all  sorts.  An  in- 
tellectual Don  Juan  of  the  political  world,  he  believed  with 
Moliere's  hero  that  two  and  two  make  four,  and  that  four 
and  four  make  eight,  and  he  was  impatient  of  any  theory 
which  would  commend  itself  to  the  mind  on  less  rigorous 
evidence.  If  contempt  for  the  intellectual  weaknesses  of 
an  opposing  party  or  doctrine  could  have  made  a  great  po- 
litican,  Mr.  Lowe  would  have  won  that  name.  In  politics, 
however,  criticism  is  not  enough.  One  must  be  able  to  orig- 
inate, to  mould  the  will  of  others,  to  compromise,  to  lead 


BIRTH   OF  THE   EMPIRE;    DEATH   OF  "THE   DUKE."   421 

while  seeming  to  follow,  often  to  follow  while  seeming  to 
lead.  Of  gifts  like  these  Mr.  Lowe  had  no  share.  He  never 
became  more  than  a  great  Parliamentary  critic  of  the  acrid 
and  vitriolic  style. 

Almost  immediately  on  the  assembling  of  the  new  Par- 
liament, Mr.  Villiers  brought  forward  a  resolution  not  mere- 
ly pledging  the  House  of  Commons  to  a  Free-trade  policy, 
but  pouring  out  a  sort  of  censure  on  all  who  had  hitherto 
failed  to  recognize  its  worth.  This  step  was  thought  neces- 
sary, and  was  indeed  made  necessary  by  the  errors  of  which 
Lord  Derby  had  been  guilty,  and  the  preposterous  vaporings 
of  some  of  his  less  responsible  followers.  If  the  resolution 
had  been  passed,  the  Government  must  have  resigned.  They 
were  willing  enough  now  to  agree  to  any  resolution  declar- 
ing that  Free-trade  was  the  established  policy  of  the  coun- 
try; but  they  could  not  accept  the  triumphant  eulogium 
which  the  resolution  proposed  to  offer  to  the  commercial 
policy  of  the  years  when  they  were  the  uncompromising  en- 
emies of  that  very  policy.  They  could  submit  to  the  pun- 
ishment imposed  on  them ;  but  they  did  not  like  this  public 
kissing  of  the  rod  and  doing  penance.  Lord  Palmerston, 
who,  even  up  to  that  time,  regarded  his  ultimate  acceptance 
of  office  under  Lord  Derby  as  a  not  impossible  event  if  once 
the  Derby  party  could  shake  themselves  quite  free  of  Pro- 
tection, devised  an  amendment  which  afforded  them  the 
means  of  a  more  or  less  honorable  retreat.  This  resolution 
pledged  the  House  to  the  "  policy  of  unrestricted  competi- 
tion firmly  maintained  and  prudently  extended ;"  but  re- 
corded no  panegyric  of  the  legislation  of  1846,  and  conse- 
quent condemnation  of  those  who  opposed  that  legislation. 
The  amendment  was  accepted  by  all  but  the  small  band 
of  irreconcilable  Protectionists:  468  voted  for  it;  only  53 
against  it;  and  the  moan  of  Protection  was  made.  All  that 
long  chapter  of  English  legislation  was  closed.  Various 
commercial  and  other  "  interests"  did  indeed  afterward  de- 
mur to  the  application  of  the  principle  of  unrestricted  com- 
petition to  their  peculiar  concerns.  But  they  did  not  plead 
for  Protection.  They  only  contended  that  the  Protection 
they  sought  for  was  not,  in  fact,  Protection  at  all,  but  Free- 
trade  under  peculiar  circumstances.  The  straightforward  doc- 
trine of  Protection  perished  of  the  debate  of  November,  1852. 


422  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Still,  the  Government  only  existed  on  sufferance.  Their 
tenure  of  office  was  somewhat  rudely  compai'ed  to  that  of  a 
bailiff  put  into  possession  of  certain  premises,  who  is  liable 
to  be  sent  away  at  any  moment  when  the  two  parties  con- 
cerned in  the  litigation  choose  to  come  to  terms.  There  was 
a  general  expectation  that  the  moment  Mr.  Disraeli  came  to 
set  out  a  genuine  financial  scheme  the  fate  of  the  Govern- 
ment would  be  decided.  So  the  event  proved.  Mr.  Disraeli 
made  a  financial  statement  which  showed  remarkable  capac- 
ity for  dealing  with  figures.  It  was  subjected  to  a  far  more 
serious  test  than  his  first  budget,  for  that  was  necessarily  a 
mere  stop-gap  or  makeshift.  This  was  a  real  budget,  alter- 
ing and  reconstructing  the  financial  system  and  the  taxation 
of  the  country.  The  skill  with  which  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  explained  his  measures  and  tossed  his  figures 
about  convinced  many  even  of  his  strongest  opponents  that 
he  had  the  capacity  to  make  a  good  budget  if  he  only  were 
allowed  to  do  so  by  the  conditions  of  his  party's  existence. 
But-  his  cabinet  had  come  into  office  under  special  obliga- 
tions to  the  country  party  and  the  farmers.  They  could 
not  avoid  making  some  experiment  in  the  way  of  special  leg- 
islation for  the  farmers :  they  had,  at  the  very  least,  to  put 
on  an  appearance  of  doing  something  for  them.  The  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer  might  be  supposed  to  be  in  the  po- 
sition of  the  soldier  in  Hogarth's  "  March  to  Finchley,"  be- 
tween the  rival  claimants  on  his  attention.  He  has  prom- 
ised and  vowed  to  the  one;  but  he  knows  that  the  slightest 
mark  of  civility  he  offers  to  her  will  be  fiercely  resented  by 
the  other.  When  Mr.  Disraeli  undertook  to  favor  the  coun- 
try interest  and  the  farmers,  he  must  have  known  only  too 
well  that  he  was  setting  all  the  Free-traders  and  Peelites 
against  him;  and  he  knew  at  the  same  time  that  if  he  neg- 
lected the  country  party  he  was  cutting  the  ground  from 
beneath  his  feet.  The  principle  of  his  budget  was  the  re- 
duction of  the  malt  duties  and  the  increase  of  the  inhabited 
house  duty.  Some  manipulations  of  the  income-tax  were  to 
be  introduced,  chiefly  with  a  view  to  lighten  the  impost  on 
farmers'  profits ;  and  there  was  to  be  a  modest  reduction 
of  the  tea  duty.  The  two  points  that  stood  out  clear  and 
prominent  before  the  House  of  Commons  were  the  reduction 
of  the  malt  duty  and  the  increase  of  the  duty  on  inhabited 


MR.  GLADSTONE.  423 

houses.  The  reduction  of  the  malt-tax,  as  Mr.  Lowe  said  in 
his  pungent  criticism,  was  the  key-stone  of  the  budget.  That 
reduction  created  a  deficit,  which  the  inhabited  house  duty 
had  to  be  doubled  in  order  to  supply.  The  scheme  was  a 
complete  failure.  The  farmers  did  not  care  much  about  the 
concession  which  had  been  made  in  their  favor ;  those  Avho 
had  to  pay  for  it  in  doubled  taxation  were  bitterly  indignant. 
Mr.  Disraeli  had  exasperated  the  one  claimant,  and  not  great- 
ly pleased  the  other.  The  Government  soon  saw  how  things 
were  likely  to  go.  The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  began 
to  see  that  he  had  only  a  desperate  fight  to  make.  The 
Whigs,  the  Free-traders,  the  Peelites,  and  such  independent 
members  or  unattached  members  as  Mr.  Lowe  and  Mr.  Ber- 
nal  Osborne,  all  fell  on  him.  It  became  a  combat  d  outrance. 
It  well  suited  Mr.  Disraeli's  peculiar  temperament.  During 
the  whole  of  his  Parliamentary  career  he  has  never  fought 
so  well  as  when  he  has  been  free  to  indulge  to  the  full  the 
courage  of  despair. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

MR.  GLADSTONE. 

THE  debate  was  one  of  the  finest  of  its  kind  ever  heard  in 
Parliament  during  our  time.  The  excitement  on  both  sides 
was  intense.  The  rivalry  was  hot  and  eager.  Mr.  Disraeli 
was  animated  by  all  the  power  of  desperation,  and  was  evi- 
dently in  a  mood  neither  to  give  nor  to  take  quarter.  He 
assailed  Sir  Charles  Wood,  the  late  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer, with  a  vehemence  and  even  a  virulence  which  cer- 
tainly added  much  to  the  piquancy  and  interest  of  the  dis- 
cussion so  far  as  listeners  were  concerned,  but  which  more 
than  once  went  to  the  very  verge  of  the  limits  of  Parliamen- 
tary decorum.  It  was  in  the  course  of  this  speech  that  Dis- 
raeli, leaning  across  the  table  and  directing  his  words  full  at 
Sir  Charles  Wood, declared,  "I  care  not  to  be  the  right  hon- 
orable gentleman's  critic,  but  if  he  has  learned  his  business, 
he  has  yet  to  learn  that  petulance  is  not  sarcasm,  and  that 
insolence  is  not  invective."  The  House  had  not  heard  the 
concluding  word  of  Disraeli's  bitter  and  impassioned  speech, 


424  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

when  at  t\vo  o'clock  in  the  morning  Mr.  Gladstone  leaped 
to  his  feet  to  answer  him.  Then  began  that  long  Parlia- 
mentary duel  which  only  knew  a  truce  when  at  the  close  of 
the  session  of  1876  Mr.  Disraeli  crossed  the  threshold  of  the 
House  of  Commons  for  the  last  time,  thenceforward  to  take 
his  place  among  the  peers  as  Lord  Beaconsfield.  During  all 
the  intervening  four-and-twenty  years  these  two  men  were 
rivals  in  power  and  in  Parliamentary  debate  as  much  as 
ever  Pitt  and  Fox  had  been.  Their  opposition,  like  that  of 
Pitt  and  Fox,  was  one  of  temperament  and  character  as  well 
as  of  genius,  position,  and  political  opinion.  The  rivalry  of 
this  first  heated  and  eventful  night  was  a  splendid  display. 
Those  who  had  thought  it  impossible  that  any  impression 
could  be  made  upon  the  House  after  the  speech  of  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli, had  to  acknowledge  that  a  yet  greater  impression  was 
produced  by  the  unprepared  reply  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  The 
House  divided  about  four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  the 
Government  were  left  in  a  minority  of  nineteen.  Mr.  Dis- 
raeli took  the  defeat  with  his  characteristic  composure.  The 
morning  was  cold  and  wet.  "It  will  be  an  unpleasant  day 
for  going  to  Osborne,"  he  quietly  remarked  to  a  friend  as 
they  went  down  Westminster  Hall  together  and  looked  out 
into  the  dreary  streets.  That  day,  at  Osborne,  the  resigna- 
tion of  the  ministry  was  formally  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
Queen. 

In  a  few  days  after,  the  Coalition  Ministry  was  formed. 
Lord  Aberdeen  was  Prime-minister;  Lord  John  Russell  took 
the  Foreign  Office ;  Lord  Palmerston  became  Home  Secre- 
tary; Mr.  Gladstone  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  The 
public  were  a  good  deal  surprised  that  Lord  Palmerston  had 
taken  such  a  place  as  that  of  Home  Secretary.  His  name 
had  been  identified  with  the  foreign  policy  of  England,  and 
it  was  not  supposed  that  he  felt  the  slightest  interest  in  the 
ordinary  business  of  the  Home  Department.  Palmerston  him- 
self explained  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  that  the  Home  Office 
was  his  own  choice.  He  was  not  anxious  to  join  the  ministry 
at  all ;  and  if  he  had  to  make  one,  he  preferred  that  he  should 
hold  some  office  in  which  he  had  personally  no  traditions. 
"  I  had  long  settled  in  my  own  mind,"  he  said, "  that  I  would 
not  go  back  to  the  Foreign  Office,  and  that  if  I  ever  took 
any  office  it  should  be  the  Home.  It  does  not  do  for  a  man 


MR.  GLADSTONE.  425 

to  pass  his  whole  life  in  one  department,  and  the  Home  Office 
deals  with  the  concerns  of  the  country  internally,  and  brings 
one  in  contact  with  one's  fellow-countrymen  ;  besides  which 
it  gives  one  more  influence  in  regard  to  the  militia  and  the 
defences  of  the  country."  Lord  Palmerston,  in  fact,  an- 
nounces that  he  has  undertaken  the  business  of  the  Home 
Office  for  the  same  reason  as  that  given  by  Fritz,  in  the 
"Grande  Duchesse,"  for  becoming  a  school -master.  "Can 
you  teach  ?"  asks  the  Grande  Duchesse.  "  No,"  is  the  an- 
swer; " <? est pour  apprendre y"  "I  go  to  learn."  The  reader 
may  well  suspect,  however,  that  it  was  not  only  with  a  view 
of  learning  the  business  of  the  internal  administration  and 
becoming  acquainted  with  his  fellow-countrymen  that  Palm- 
erston preferred  the  Home  Office.  He  would  not  consent  to 
be  Foreign  Secretary  on  any  terms  but  his  own,  and  these 
terms  were  then  out  of  the  question. 

The  principal  interest  felt  in  the  new  Government  was  not, 
however,  centred  in  Lord  Palmerston.  The  new  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer  was  the  man  upon  whom  the  eyes  of  curi- 
osity and  interest  were  chiefly  turned.  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
still  a  young  man,  in  the  Parliamentary  sense  at  least.  He 
was  but  forty-three.  His  career  had  been  in  every  way  re- 
markable. He  had  entered  public  life  at  a  very  early  age. 
He  had  been,  to  quote  the  words  of  Macaulay,  a  distinguish- 
ed debater  in  the  House  of  Commons  ever  since  he  was  one- 
and-twenty.  Criticising  his  book,  "  The  State  in  its  Rela- 
tions with  the  Church,"  which  was  published  in  1838, 
Macaulay  speaks  of  Gladstone  as  "a  young  man  of  unblem- 
ished character  and  of  distinguished  Parliamentary  talents, 
the  rising  hope  of  those  stern  and  unbending  Tories  who 
follow  reluctantly  and  mutinously  a  leader  whose  experi- 
ence is  indispensable  to  them,  but  whose  cautious  temper 
and  moderate  opinions  they  abhor."  The  time  was  not  so 
far  away  when  the  stern  and  unbending  Tories  would  regard 
Gladstone  as  the  greatest  hope  of  their  most  bitter  enemies. 
Lord  Macaulay  goes  on  to  overwhelm  the  views  expressed 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  as  to  the  relations  between  State  and 
Church,  with  a  weight  of  argument  and  gorgeousness  of  il- 
lustration that  now  seem  to  have  been  hardly  called  for. 
One  of  the  doctrines  of  the  young  statesman  which  Macau- 
lay  confutes  with  especial  warmth  is  the  principle  which,  as 


426  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

he  states  it,  "  would  give  the  Irish  a  Protestant  Church 
whether  they  like  it  or  not."  The  author  of  the  book  which 
contained  this  doctrine  was  the  author  of  the  disestablish- 
ment of  the  State  Church  in  Ireland. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  by  birth  a  Lancashire  man.  It  is  not 
unworthy  of  notice  that  Lancashire  gave  to  the  Parliaments 
of  recent  times  their  three  greatest  orators — Mr.  Gladstone, 
Mr.  Bright,  and  the  late  Lord  Derby.  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
born  in  Liverpool,  and  was  the  son  of  Sir  John  Gladstone,  a 
Scotchman,  who  founded  a  great  house  in  the  seaport  of  the 
Mersey.  He  entered  Parliament  when  very  young  as  a 
protege  of  the  Newcastle  family,  and  he  soon  faithfully  at- 
tached himself  to  Sir  Robert  Peel.  His  knowledge  of 
finance,  his  thorough  appreciation  of  the  various  needs  of  a 
nation's  commerce  and  business,  his  middle-class  origin,  all 
brought  him  into  natural  affinity  with  his  great  leader.  He 
became  a  Free-trader  with  Peel.  He  was  not  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  oddly  enough,  during  the  session  when  the 
Free-trade  battle  was  fought  and  won.  It  has  already  been 
explained  in  this  history  that  as  he  had  changed  his  opinions 
with  his  leader  he  felt  a  reluctance  to  ask  the  support  of  the 
Newcastle  family  for  the  borough  which  by  virtue  of  their 
influence  he  had  previously  represented.  But,  except  for 
that  short  interval,  his  whole  career  may  be  pronounced  one 
long  Parliamentary  success.  He  was  from  the  very  first 
recognized  as  a  brilliant  debater,  and  as  one  who  promised 
to  be  an  orator;  but  it  was  riot  until  after  the  death  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  that  he  proved  himself  the  master  of  Parlia- 
mentary eloquence  we  all  now  know  him  to  be.  It  was  he 
who  pronounced  what  may  be  called  the  funeral  oration 
upon  Peel  in  the  House  of  Commons ;  but  the  speech, 
although  undoubtedly  inspired  by  the  truest  and  the  deep- 
est feelings,  does  not  seem  by  any  means  equal  to  some  of 
his  more  recent  efforts.  There  is  an  appearance  of  elabo- 
ration about  it  which  goes  far  to  mar  its  effect.  Perhaps 
the  first  really  great  speech  made  by  Gladstone  was  the  re- 
ply to  Disraeli  on  the  memorable  December  morning  which 
we  have  just  described.  That  speech  put  him  in  the  very 
foremost  rank  of  English  orators.  Then,  perhaps,  he  first 
showed  to  the  full  the  one  great  quality  in  which  as  a  Par- 
liamentary orator  he  lias  never  had  a  rival  in  our  time — the 


MR.  GLADSTONE.  427 

readiness  which  seems  to  require  no  preparation,  but  can 
marshal  all  its  arguments  as  if  by  instinct  at  a  given  mo- 
ment, and  the  fluency  which  can  pour  out  the  most  eloquent 
language  as  freely  as  though  it  were  but  the  breath  of  the 
nostrils.  When,  shortly  after  the  formation  of  the  Coalition 
Ministry,  Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  his  first  budget,  it  was  re- 
garded as  a  positive  curiosity  of  financial  exposition.  It 
was  a  performance  that  belonged  to  the  department  of  the 
fine  arts.  The  speech  occupied  several  hours,  and  assuredly 
no  listener  wished  it  the  shorter  by  a  single  sentence.  Pitt, 
we  read,  had  the  same  art  of  making  a  budget  speech  a  fas- 
cinating discourse ;  but  in  our  time  no  minister  has  had  this 
gift  except  Mr.  Gladstone.  Each  time  that  he  essayed  the 
same  task  subsequently  he  accomplished  just  the  same  suc- 
cess. Mr.  Gladstone's  first  oratorical  qualification  was  his 
exquisite  voice.  Such  a  voice  would  make  commonplace 
seem  interesting,  and  lend  something  of  fascination  to  dul- 

O  7  O 

ness  itself.  It  was  singularly  pure,  clear,  resonant,  and 
sweet.  The  orator  never  seemed  to  use  the  slightest  effort 
or  strain  in  filling  any  hall  and  reaching  the  ear  of  the  far- 
thest among  the  audience.  It  was  not  a  loud  voice  or  of 
great  volume;  but  strong,  vibrating,  and  silvery.  The 
words  were  always  aided  by  energetic  action  and  by  the 
deep-gleaming  eyes  of  the  orator.  Somebody  once  said  that 
Gladstone  was  the  only  man  in  the  House  who  could  talk  in 
italics.  The  saying  was  odd,  but  was  nevertheless  appro- 
priate and  expressive.  Gladstone  could  by  the  slightest 
modulation  of  his  voice  give  all  the  emphasis  of  italics,  of 
small  print,  or  large  print,  or  any  other  effect  he  might  de- 
sire, to  his  spoken  words.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  his 
wonderful  gift  of  words  sometimes  led  him  astray.  It  was 
often  such  a  fluency  as  that  of  a  torrent  on  which  the  orator 
was  carried  away.  Gladstone  had  to  pay  for  his  fluency  by 
being  too  fluent.  He  could  seldom  resist  the  temptation  to 
shower  too  many  words  on  his  subject  and  his  hearers. 
Sometimes  he  involved  his  sentence  in  parenthesis  within 
parenthesis  until  the  ordinary  listener  began  to  think  extri- 
cation an  impossibility ;  but  the  orator  never  failed  to  un- 
ravel all  the  entanglements,  and  to  bring  the  passage  out  to 
a  clear  and  legitimate  conclusion.  There  was  never  any 
halt  or  incoherency,  nor  did  the  joints  of  the  sentence  fail 


428  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

to  fit  together  in  the  right  way.  Harley  once  described  a 
famous  speech  as  "a  circumgyration  of  incoherent  words." 
This  description  certainly  could  not  be  applied  even  to  Mr. 
Gladstone's  most  involved  passages;  but  if  some  of  those 
were  described  as  a  circumgyration  of  coherent  words,  the 
phrase  might  be  considered  germane  to  the  matter.  His 
style  was  commonly  too  redundant.  It  seemed  as  if  it  be- 
longed to  a  certain  school  of  exuberant  Italian  rhetoric. 
Yet  it  was  hardly  to  be  called  florid.  Gladstone  indulged 
in  few  flowers  of  rhetoric,  and  his  great  gift  was  not  irnag- 

/  o  o  o 

ination.  His  fault  was  simply  the  habitual  use  of  too  many 
words.  This  defect  was,  indeed,  a  characteristic  of  the  Peel- 
ite  school  of  eloquence.  Mr.  Gladstone  retained  some  of 
the  defects  of  the  school  in  which  he  had  been  trained,  even 
after  he  had  come  to  surpass  its  greatest  master. 

Often,  however,  this  superb,  exuberant  rush  of  words  add- 
ed indescribable  strength  to  the  eloquence  of  the  speaker. 
In  passages  of  indignant  remonstrance  or  denunciation,  when 
word  followed  word,  and  stroke  came  down  upon  stroke, 
with  a  wealth  of  resource  that  seemed  inexhaustible,  the 
very  fluency  and  variety  of  the  speaker  overwhelmed  his 
audience.  Interruption  only  gave  him  a  new  stimulus,  and 
appeared  to  supply  him  with  fresh  resources  of  argument 
and  illustration.  His  retorts  leaped  to  his  lips.  His  eye 
caught,  sometimes,  even  the  mere  gesture  that  indicated  dis- 
sent or  question  ;  and  perhaps  some  unlucky  opponent  who 
was  only  thinking  of  what  might  be  said  in  opposition  to  the 
great  orator  found  himself  suddenly  dragged  into  the  con- 
flict, and  overwhelmed  with  a  torrent  of  remonstrance,  argu- 
ment, and  scornful  words.  Gladstone  had  not  much  humor 
of  the  playful  kind,  but  he  had  a  certain  force  of  sarcastic 
and  scornful  rhetoric.  He  was  always  terribly  in  earnest. 
Whether  the  subject  were  great  or  small,  he  threw  his  whole 
soul  into  it.  Once,  in  addressing  a  school-boy  gathering,  he 
told  his  young  listeners  that  if  a  boy  ran,  he  ought  always 
to  run  as  fast  as  he  could ;  if  he  jumped,  he  ought  always 
to  jump  as  far  as  he  could.  He  illustrated  his  maxim  in 
his  own  career.  He  had  no  idea,  apparently,  of  running  or 
jumping  in  such  measure  as  happened  to  please  the  fancy 
of  the  moment.  He  always  exercised  his  splendid  powers 
to  the  uttermost  strain. 


MR.  GLADSTONE.  429 

A  distinguished  critic  once  pronounced  Mr.  Gladstone  to 
be  the  greatest  Parliamentary  orator  of  our  time,  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  made  by  for  the  greatest  number  of 
fine  speeches,  while  admitting  that  two  or  three  speeches 
had  been  made  by  other  men  of  the  day  which  might  rank 
higher  than  any  of  his.  This  is,  however,  a  principle  of 
criticism  which  posterity  never  sanctions.  The  greatest 
speech,  the  greatest  poem,  give  the  author  the  highest 
place,  though  the  effort  were  but  single.  Shakspeare  would 
rank  beyond  Massinger  just  as  he  does  now,  had  he  written 
only  "The  Tempest."  We  cannot  say  how  many  novels, 
each  as  good  as  "  Gil  Bias,"  would  make  La  Sage  the  equal 
of  Cervantes.  On  this  point  fame  is  inexorable.  We  are 
not,  therefore,  inclined  to  call  Mr.  Gladstone  the  greatest 
English  orator  of  our  time  when  we  remember  some  of  the 
finest  speeches  of  Mr.  Bright;  but  did  we  regard  Parlia- 
mentary speaking  as  a  mere  instrument  of  Parliamentary 
business  and  debate,  then  unquestionably  Mr.  Gladstone  is 
not  only  the  greatest,  but  by  far  the  greatest  English  orator 
of  our  time;  for  he  had  a  richer  combination  of  gifts  than 
any  other  man  we  can  remember,  and  he  could  use  them 
oftenest  with  effect.  He  was  like  a  racer  which  cannot  in- 
deed always  go  faster  than  every  rival,  but  can  win  more 
races  in  the  year  than  any  other  horse.  Mr.  Gladstone 
could  get  up  at  any  moment,  and  no  matter  how  many 
times  a  night,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  be  argumenta- 
tive or  indignant,  pour  out  a  stream  of  impassioned  elo- 
quence or  a  shower  of  figures,  just  as  the  exigency  of  the 
debate  and  the  moment  required.  He  was  not,  of  course, 
always  equal;  but  he  was  always  eloquent  and  effective. 
He  seemed  as  if  he  could  not  be  anything  but  eloquent. 
Perhaps,  judged  in  this  way,  he  never  had  an  equal  in  the 
English  Parliament.  Neither  Pitt  nor  Fox  ever  made  so 
many  speeches  combining  so  many  great  qualities.  Chat- 
ham was  a  great  actor  rather  than  a  great  orator.  Burke 
was  the  greatest  political  essayist  who  ever  addressed  the 
House  of  Commons.  Canning  did  not  often  rise  above  the 
level  of  burnished  rhetorical  commonplace.  Macaulay,  who 
during  his  time  drew  the  most  crowded  houses  of  any  speak- 
er, not  even  excepting  Peel,  was  not  an  orator  in  the  true 
sense.  Probably  no  one,  past  or  present,  had  in  combina- 


430  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

tion  so  many  gifts  of  voice,  manner,  fluency  and  argument, 
style,  reason  and  passion,  as  Mr.  Gladstone. 

The  House  of  Commons  was  his  ground.  There  he  was 
himself;  there  he  was  always  seen  to  the  best  advantage. 
As  a  rule,  he  was  not  so  successful  on  the  platform.  His 
turn  of  mind  did  not  tit  him  well  for  the  work  of  addressing 
great  public  meetings.  He  loved  to  look  too  carefully  at 
every  side  of  a  question,  and  did  not  always  go  so  quickly 
to  the  heart  of  it  as  would  suit  great  popular  audiences. 
The  principal  defect  of  his  mind  was  probably  a  lack  of 
simplicity,  a  tendency  to  over-refining  and  supersubtle  ar- 
gument. Not  perhaps  unnaturally,  however,  when  he  did, 
during  some  of  the  later  passages  of  his  career,  lay  him- 
self out  for  the  work  of  addressing  popular  audiences,  he 
threw  away  all  discrimination,  and  gave  loose  to  the  full 
force  with  which,  under  the  excitement  of  great  pressure, 
he  was  wont  to  rush  at  a  principle.  There  seemed  a  cer- 
tain lack  of  balance  in  his  mind ;  a  want  of  the  exact  poise 
of  all  his  faculties.  Either  he  must  refine  too  much,  or  he 
did  not  refine  at  all.  Thus  he  became  accused,  and  with 
some  reason,  of  over-refining  and  all  but  quibbling  in  some 
of  his  Parliamentary  arguments ;  of  looking  at  all  sides  of  a 
question  so  carefully  that  it  was  too  long  in  doubt  whether 
he  was  ever  going  to  form  any  opinion  of  his  own ;  and  he 
was  sometimes  accused,  with  equal  justice,  of  pleading  one 
side  of  a  political  cause  before  great  meetings  of  his  coun- 
trymen with  all  the  passionate  blindness  of  a  partisan.  The 
accusations  might  seem  self-contradictory,  if  we  did  not  re- 
member that  they  will  apply,  and  with  great  force  and  jus- 
tice, to  Burke.  Burke  cut  blocks  with  a  razor,  and  went  on 
refining  to  an  impatient  House  of  Commons,  only  eager  for 
its  dinner;  and  the  same  Burke  threw  himself  into  antag- 
onism to  the  French  Revolution  as  if  he  were  the  wildest 
of  partisans ;  as  if  the  question  had  but  one  side,  and  only 
fools  or  villains  could  possibly  say  it  had  any  other. 

Mr.  Gladstone  grew  slowly  into  Liberal  convictions.  At 
the  time  when  he  joined  the  Coalition  Ministry  he  was  still 
regarded  as  one  who  had  scarcely  left  the  camp  of  Toryism, 
and  who  had  only  joined  that  ministry  because  it  was  a 
coalition.  Years  after,  he  was  applied  to  by  the  late  Lord 
Derby  to  join  a  ministry  formed  by  him ;  and  it  was  not 


MR.  GLADSTONE.  431 

supposed  that  there  was  anything  unreasonable  in  the  prop- 
osition. The  h'rst  impulse  toward  Liberal  principles  was 
given  to  his  mind,  probably,  by  his  change  with  his  leader 
from  Protection  to  Free-trade.  When  a  man  like  Gladstone 
saw  that  his  traditional  principles  and  those  of  his  party 
had  broken  down  in  any  one  direction,  it  was  but  natural 
that  he  should  begin  to  question  their  endurance  in  other 
directions.  The  whole  fabric  of  belief  was  built  up  togeth- 
er. Gladstone's  was  a  mind  of  that  order  that  sees  a  prin- 
ciple in  everything,  and  must,  to  adopt  the  phrase  of  a  great 
preacher,  make  the  ploughing  as  much  a  part  of  religious 
duty  as  the  praying.  The  interests  of  religion  seemed  to 
him  bound  up  with  the  creed  of  Conservatism ;  the  princi- 
ples of  Protection  must,  probably,  at  one  time  have  seemed 
a  part  of  the  whole  creed  of  which  one  article  was  as  sacred 
as  another.  His  intellect  and  his  principles,  however,  found 
themselves  compelled  to  follow  the  guidance  of  his  leader 
in  the  matter  of  Free-trade ;  and  when  inquiry  thus  began 
it  was  not  very  likely  soon  to  stop.  He  must  have  seen 
how  much  the  working  of  such  a  principle  as  that  of  Protec- 
tion became  a  class  interest  in  England,  and  how  impossible 
it  would  have  been  for  it  to  continue  long  in  existence  un- 
der an  extended  and  a  popular  suffrage.  In  other  countries 
the  fallacy  of  Protection  did  not  show  itself  so  glaringly  in 
the  eyes  of  the  poorer  classes,  for  in  other  countries  it  was 
not  the  staple  food  of  the  population  that  became  the  prin- 
cipal object  of  a  protective  duty.  But  in  England  the 
bread  on  which  the  poorest  had  to  live  was  made  to  pay  a 
tax  for  the  benefit  of  landlords  and  farmers.  As  long  as 
one  believed  this  to  be  a  necessary  condition  of  a  great  un- 
questionable creed,  it  was  easy  for  a  young  statesman  to  rec- 
oncile himself  to  it.  It  might  bear  cruelly  on  individuals, 
or  even  multitudes;  but  so  would  the  law  of  gravitation,  as 
Mill  lias  remarked,  bear  harshly  on  the  best  of  men  when  it 
dashed  him  down  from  a  height  and  broke  his  bones.  It 
would  be  idle  to  question  the  existence  of  the  law  on  that 
account;  or  to  disbelieve  the  whole  teaching  of  the  physical 
science  which  explains  its  movements.  But  when  Mr.  Glad- 
stone came  to  be  convinced  that  there  was  no  such  law  as 
the  Protection  principle  at  all ;  that  it  was  a  mere  sham  ; 
that  to  believe  in  it  was  to  be  guilty  of  an  economic  heresy 


432  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

— then  it  was  impossible  for  him  not  to  begin  questioning 
the  genuineness  of  the  whole  system  of  political  thought  of 
which  it  formed  but  a  part.  Perhaps,  too,  he  was  impelled 
toward  Liberal  principles  at  home  by  seeing  what  the  effects 
of  opposite  doctrines  had  been  abroad.  He  rendered  memo- 
rable service  to  the  Liberal  cause  of  Europe  by  his  eloquent 
protest  against  the  brutal  treatment  of  Baron  Poerio  and 
other  Liberals  of  Naples  who  were  imprisoned  by  the  Nea- 
politan king — a  protest  which  Garibaldi  declared  to  have 
sounded  the  first  trumpet-call  of  Italian  liberty.  In  render- 
ing service  to  Liberalism  and  to  Europe  he  rendered  service 
also  to  his  own  intelligence.  He  helped  to  set  free  his  own 
spirit  as  well  as  the  Neapolitan  people.  We  find  him,  as 
his  career  goes  on,  dropping  the  traditions  of  his  youth,  al- 
ways rising  higher  in  Liberalism,  and  not  going  back.  One 
of  the  foremost  of  his  compeers,  and  his  only  actual  rival  in 
popular  eloquence,  eulogized  him  as  always  struggling  to- 
ward the  light.  The  common  taunts  addressed  to  public 
men  who  have  changed  their  opinions  were  hardly  ever  ap- 
plied to  him.  Even  his  enemies  felt  that  the  one  idea  al- 
ways inspired  him — a  conscientious  anxiety  to  do  the  right 
thing.  None  accused  him  of  being  one  of  the  politicians 
who  mistake,  as  Victor  Hugo  says,  a  weather-cock  for  a  flag. 
With  many  qualities  which  seemed  hardly  suited  to  a  prac- 
tical politician;  with  a  sensitive  and  eager  temper, like  that 
of  Canning,  and  a  turn  for  theological  argument  that,  as  a 
rule,  Englishmen  do  not  love  in  a  statesman ;  with  an  im- 
petuosity that  often  carried  him  far  astray,  and  a  deficiency 
of  those  genial  social  qualities  that  go  so  far  to  make  a  pub- 
lic success  in  England,  Mr.  Gladstone  maintained  through 
the  whole  of  his  career  a  reputation  against  which  there  Avas 
hardly  a  serious  cavil.  The  worst  thing  that  was  said  of 
him  was  that  he  was  too  impulsive,  and  that  his  intelligence 
was  too  restless.  He  was  an  essayist,  a  critic,  a  Homeric 
scholar;  a  dilettante  in  art,  music,  and  old  china;  lie  was  a 
theological  controversialist ;  he  was  a  political  economist,  a 
financier,  a  practical  administrator  whose  gift  of  mastering 
details  has  hardly  ever  been  equalled ;  he  was  a  statesman 
and  an  orator.  No  man  could  attempt  so  many  things  and 
not  occasionally  make  himself  the  subject  of  a  sneer.  The 
intense  gravity  and  earnestness  of  Gladstone's  mind  always, 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  433 

however,  saved  him  from  the  special  penalty  of  such  versa- 
tility; no  satirist  described  him  as  not  one,  but  all  man- 
kind's epitome. 

As  yet,  however,  he  is  only  the  young  statesman  who  was 
the  other  day  the  hope  of  the  more  solemn  and  solid  Con- 
servatives, and  in  whom  they  have  not  even  yet  entirely 
ceased  to  put  some  faith.  The  Coalition  Ministry  was  so 
formed  that  it  was  not  supposed  a  man  necessarily  nailed  his 
colors  to  any  mast  when  he  joined  it.  More  than  one  of 
Gladstone's  earliest  friends  and  political  associates  had  a 
part  in  it.  The  ministry  might  undoubtedly  be  called  an 
Administration  of  All  the  Talents.  Except  the  late  Lord 
Derby  and  Mr.  Disraeli,  it  included  almost  every  man  of  real 
ability  who  belonged  to  either  of  the  two  great  parties  of 
the  State.  The  Manchester  School  had,  of  course,  no  place 
there ;  but  they  were  not  likely  just  yet  to  be  recognized  as 
constituting  one  of  the  elements  out  of  which  even  a  Coali- 
tion Ministry  might  be  composed. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

THE    EASTERN   QUESTION. 

FOR  forty  years  England  had  been  at  peace.  There  had, 
indeed,  been  little  wars  here  and  there  with  some  of  her  Asi- 
atic and  African  neighbors ;  and  once  or  twice,  as  in  the  in- 
stance of  the  quarrel  between  Turkey  and  Egypt,  she  had 
been  menaced  for  a  moment  with  a  dispute  of  a  more  for- 
midable kind  and  nearer  home.  But  the  trouble  had  passed 
away,  and  from  Waterloo  downward  England  had  known  no 
real  war.  The  new  generation  were  growing  up  in  a  kind 
of  happy  belief  that  wars  were  things  of  the  past  for  us  ; 
out  of  fashion ;  belonging  to  a  ruder  and  less  rational  soci- 
ety, like  the  wearing  of  armor  and  the  carrying  of  weapons 
in  the  civil  streets.  It  is  not  surprising  if  it  seemed  possi- 
ble to  many  that  the  England  of  the  future  might  regard 
the  instruments  and  the  ways  of  war  with  the  same  curious 
wonder  as  that  which  Virgil  assumes  would  one  day  fill  the 
minds  of  the  rustic  laborers  whose  ploughs  turned  up  on 
some  field  of  ancient  battle  the  rusted  swords  and  battered 

I.— 19 


434  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

helmets  of  forgotten  warriors.  During  all  the  convulsions 
of  the  Continent,  England  had  remained  undisturbed.  When 
bloody  revolutions  were  storming  through  other  capitals, 
London  was  smiling  over  the  dispersion  of  the  Chartists  by 
a  few  special  constables.  When  the  armies  of  Austria,  of 
Russia,  of  France,  of  Sardinia  were  scattered  over  vast  and 
various  Continental  battle-grounds,  our  troops  were  passing 
in  peaceful  pageantry  of  review  before  the  well-pleased  eyes 
of  their  Sovereign  in  some  stately  royal  park.  A  new  school 
as  well  as  anew  generation  had  sprung  up.  This  school, full 
of  faith,  but  full  of  practical,  shrewd  logic  as  well,  was  teach- 
ing with  great  eloquence  and  effect  that  the  practice  of  set- 
tling international  controversy  by  the  sword  was  costly, 
barbarous,  and  blundering,  as  well  as  wicked.  The  practice 
of  the  duel  in  England  had  utterly  gone  out.  Battle  was 
forever  out  of  fashion  as  a  means  of  settling  private  con- 
troversy in  England.  Why  then  should  it  be  unreasonable 
to  believe  that  the  like  practice  among  nations  might  soon 
become  equally  obsolete? 

Such,  certainly,  was  the  faith  of  a  great  many  intelligent 
persons  at  the  time  when  the  Coalition  Ministry  was  form- 
ed. The  majority  tacitly  acquiesced  in  the  belief  without 
thinking  much  about  it.  They  had  never  in  their  time  seen 
England  engaged  in  European  war;  and  it  was  natural  to 
assume  that  what  they  had  never  seen  they  were  never  like- 
ly to  see.  Any  one  who  retraces  attentively  the  history  of 
English  public  opinion  at  that  time  will  easily  find  evidence 
enough  of  a  commonly  accepted  understanding  that  Eng- 
land had  done  with  great  wars.  Even  then,  perhaps,  a 
shrewd  observer  might  have  been  inclined  to  conjecture 
that  by  the  very  force  of  reaction  a  change  would  soon  set 
in.  Man,  said  Lord  Palmerston,  is  by  nature  a  fighting  and 
quarrelling  animal.  This  was  one  of  those  smart  saucy 
generalizations  characteristic  of  its  author,  and  which  used 
to  provoke  many  graver  and  more  philosophic  persons,  but 
which  nevertheless  often  got  at  the  heart  of  a  question  in  a 
rough-and-ready  sort  of  way.  In  the  season  of  which  we 
are  now  speaking,  it  was  not,  however,  the  common  belief 
that  man  was  by  nature  a  fighting  and  a  quarrelling  animal, 
at  least  in  England.  Bad  government,  the  arbitrary  power 
of  an  aristocracy,  the  necessity  of  finding  occupation  for  a 


THE  EASTERN  QUESTION.  435 

standing  army,  the  ambitions  of  princes,  the  misguiding  les- 
sons of  romance  and  poetry — these  and  other  influences  had 
converted  man  into  an  instrument  of  war.  Leave  him  to  his 
own  impulses,  his  own  nature,  his  own  ideas  of  self-interest, 
and  the  better  teachings  of  wiser  guides,  and  he  is  sure  to 
remain  in  the  paths  of  peace.  Such  Avas  the  common  belief 
of  the  year  or  two  after  the  Great  Exhibition — the  belief 
fervently  preached  by  a  few  and  accepted  without  contra- 
diction by  the  majority,  as  most  common  beliefs  are — the 
belief  floating  in  the  air  of  the  time,  and  becoming  part  of 
the  atmosphere  in  which  the  generation  was  brought  up. 
Suddenly  all  this  happy,  quiet  faitli  was  disturbed,  and  the 
long  peace,  which  the  hero  of  Tennyson's  "Maud  "says  he 
thought  no  peace,  was  over  and  done.  The  hero  of"  Maud  " 
had,  it  will  be  observed,  the  advantage  of  explaining  his 
convictions  after  the  war  had  broken  out.  The  name  was 
indeed  legion  of  those  who,  under  the  same  conditions,  dis- 
covered, like  him,  that  they  had  never  relished  the  long,  long 
peace,  or  believed  in  it  much  as  a  peace  at  all. 

The  Eastern  Question  it  was  that  disturbed  the  dream  of 
peace.  The  use  of  such  phrases  as  "  the  Eastern  Question," 
borrowed  chiefly  from  the  political  vocabulary  of  France,  is 
not  in  general  to  be  commended  ;  but  we  can  in  this  instance 
find  no  more  ready  and  convenient  way  of  expressing  clearly 
and  precisely  the  meaning  of  the  crisis  which  had  arisen  in 
Europe.  It  was  strictly  the  Eastern  "  question  " — the  ques- 
tion of  what  to  do  with  the  East  of  Europe.  It  was  certain 
that  things  could  not  remain  as  they  then  were,  and  nothing 
else  was  certain.  The  Ottoman  Power  had  been  settled 
during  many  centuries  in  the  south-east  of  Europe.  It  had 
come  in  there  as  a  conqueror,  and  had  remained  there  only 
as  a  conqueror  occupies  the  ground  his  tents  are  covering. 
The  Turk  had  many  of  the  strong  qualities  and  even  the 
virtues  of  a  great  warlike  conqueror;  but  he  had  no  capacity 
or  care  for  the  arts  of  peace.  He  never  thought  of  assimi- 
lating himself  to  those  whom  he  had  conquered,  or  them  to 
him.  He  disdained  to  learn  anything  from  them;  he  did 
not  care  whether  or  no  they  learned  anything  from  him.  It 
has  been  well  remarked,  that  of  all  the  races  who  conquered 
Greeks,  the  Turks  alone  learned  nothing  from  their  gifted 
captives.  Captive  Greece  conquered  all  the  world  except 


436  A   HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

the  Turks.  They  defied  her.  She  could  not  teach  them 
letters  or  arts,  commerce  or  science.  The  Turks  were  not, 
as  a  rule,  oppressive  to  the  races  that  lived  under  them. 
They  were  not  habitual  persecutors  of  the  faiths  they  deem- 
ed heretical.  In  this  respect  they  often  contrasted  favora- 
bly with  states  that  ought  to  have  been  able  to  show  them 
a  better  example.  In  truth,  the  Turk,  for  the  most  part,  was 
disposed  to  look  with  disdainful  composure  on  what  he  con- 
sidered the  religious  follies  of  the  heretical  races  who  did  not 
believe  in  the  Prophet.  They  were  objects  of  his  scornful 
pity  rather  than  of  his  anger.  Every  now  and  then,  indeed, 
some  sudden  fierce  outburst  of  fanatical  cruelty  toward  some 
of  the  subject-sects  horrified  Europe,  and  reminded  her  that 
the  conqueror  who  had  settled  himself  down  in  her  south- 
eastern corner  was  still  a  barbarian  who  had  no  right  or 
place  in  civilized  life.  But,  as  a  rule,  the  Turk  did  not  care 
enough  about  the  races  he  ruled  over  to  feel  the  impulses 
of  the  perverted  fanaticism  which  would  strive  to  scourge 
men  into  the  faith  itself  believes  needful  to  salvation. 

At  one  time  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  all  the  Powers 
of  civilized  Europe  would  gladly  have  seen  the  Turk  driven 
out  of  our  Continent.  But  the  Turk  was  powerful  for  a  long 
series  of  generations,  and  it  seemed  for  awhile  rather  a  ques- 
tion whether  he  would  not  send  the  Europeans  out  of  their 
own  grounds.  He  was  for  centuries  the  great  terror,  the 
nightmare,  of  Western  Europe.  When  he  began  to  decay, 
and  when  his  aggressive  strength  was  practically  all  gone, 
it  might  have  been  thought  that  the  Western  Powers  would 
then  have  managed  somehow  to  get  rid  of  him.  But  in  the 
mean  time  the  condition  of  Europe  had  greatly  changed.  No 
one  not  actually  subject  to  the  Turk  was  afraid  of  him  any 
more;  and  other  States  had  arisen  strong  for  aggression. 
The  uncertainties  of  these  States  as  to  the  intentions  of  their 
neighbors  and  each  other  proved  a  better  bulwark  for  the 
Turks  than  any  warlike  strength  of  their  own  could  any 
longer  have  furnished.  The  growth  of  the  great  Russian 
empire  was  of  itself  enough  to  change  the  whole  conditions 
of  the  problem. 

Nothing  in  our  times  has  been  more  remarkable  than  the 
sudden  growth  of  Russia.  The  rise  of  the  United  States  is 
not  so  wonderful :  for  the  men  who  made  the  United  States 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  437 

were  civilized  men;  men  of  our  own  race  who  might  be  ex- 
pected to  mafce  a  way  for  themselves  anywhere,  and  who 
were,  moreover,  put  by  destiny  in  possession  of  a  vast  and 
splendid  continent  having  all  variety  of  climate  and  a  limit- 
less productiveness,  and  where  they  had  no  neighbors  or  ri- 
vals to  molest  them.  But  Russia  was  peopled  by  a  race 
who,  even  down  to  our  own  times,  remain  in  many  respects 
little  better  than  semi-barbarous;  and  she  had  enemies  and 
obstacles  on  all  sides.  A  few  generations  ago  Russia  was 
literally  an  inland  state.  She  was  shut  up  in  the  heart  of 
Eastern  Europe  as  if  in  a  prison.  The  genius,  the  craft,  and 
the  audacity  of  Peter  the  Great  first  broke  the  narrow 
bounds  set  to  the  Russia  of  his  day,  and  extended  her  fron- 
tier to  the  sea.  He  was  followed,  after  a  reign  or  two,  by 
a  woman  ^of  genius,  daring,  unscrupulousness,  and  profligacy 
equal  to  his  own — the  greatest  woman  probably  who  ever 
sat  on  a  throne,  Elizabeth  of  England  not  even  excepted. 
Catherine  the  Second  so  ably  followed  the  example  of  Peter 
the  Great,  that  she  extended  the  Russian  frontier  in  direc- 
tions which  he  had  not  had  opportunity  to  stretch  to.  By 
the  time  her  reign  was  done  Russia  was  one  of  the  Great 
Powers  of  Europe,  entitled  to  enter  into  negotiations  on  a 
footing  of  equality  with  the  proudest  States  of  the  Conti- 
nent. Unlike  Turkey,  Russia  had  always  showed  a  yearn- 
ing after  the  latest  developments  of  science  and  of  civiliza- 
tion. There  was  something  even  of  affectation,  provoking 
the  smiles  of  an  older  and  more  ingrained  culture,  in  the  ef- 
forts persistently  made  by  Russia  to  put  on  the  garments 
of  Western  civilization.  Catherine  the  Great,  in  especial, 
had  set  the  example  in  this  way.  She  invited  Diderot  to 
her  court.  She  adorned  her  cabinet  with  a  bust  of  Charles 
James  Fox.  While  some  of  the  personal  habits  of  herself 
and  of  those  who  surrounded  her  at  court  would  have  seemed 
too  rude  and  coarse  for  Esquimaux,  and  while  she  was  put- 
ting down  free  opinion  at  home  with  a  severity  worthy  only 
of  some  mediaeval  Asiatic  potentate,  she  was  always  talking 
as  though  she  were  a  disciple  of  Rousseau's  ideas,  and  a  pupil 
of  Chesterfield  in  manners.  This  may  have  seemed  ridicu- 
lous enough  sometimes ;  and  even  in  our  own  days  the  con- 
trast between  the  professions  and  the  practices  of  Russia  is 
a  familiar  subject  of  satire.  But  in  nations,  at  least,  the  horn- 


A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

age  which  imitation  pays  often  wins  for  half-conscious  hy- 
pocrisy as  much  success  as  earnest  and  sincere  endeavor.  A 
nation  that  tries  to  appear  more  civilized  than  it  really  is 
ends  very  often  by  becoming  more  civilized  than  its  neigh- 
bors ever  thought  it  likely  to  be. 

The  wars  against  Napoleon  brought  Russia  into  close  al- 
liance with  England,  Austria,  Prussia,  and  other  European 
States  of  old  and  advanced  civilization.  Russia  was,  during 
one  part  of  that  great  struggle,  the  leading  spirit  of  the  alli- 
ance against  Napoleon.  Her  soldiers  were  seen  in  Italy  and 
in  France,  as  well  as  in  the  east  of  Europe.  The  semi-sav- 
age state  became  in  the  eyes  of  Europe  a  power  charged, 
along  with  others,  with  the  protection  of  the  conservative 
interests  of  the  Continent.  She  was  recognized  as  a  valua- 
ble friend  and  a  most  formidable  enemy.  Gradually  it  be- 
came evident  that  she  could  be  aggressive  as  well  as  con- 
servative. In  the  war  between  Austria  and  Hungary,  Rus- 
sia intervened  and  conquered  Austria's  rebellious  Hungari- 
ans for  her.  Russia  had  already  earned  the  hatred  of  Eu- 
ropean Liberals  by  her  share  in  the  partition  of  Poland  and 
her  manner  of  dealing  with  the  Poles.  After  awhile  it  grew 
to  be  a  fixed  conviction  in  the  mind  of  the  Liberalism  of 
Western  Europe  that  Russia  was  the  greatest  obstacle  then 
existing  in  civilization  to  the  spread  of  popular  ideas.  The 
Turk  was  comparatively  harmless  in  that  sense.  He  was 
well  content  now,  so  much  had  his  ancient  ambition  shrunk 
and  his  ancient  war  spirit  gone  out,  if  his  strong  and  restless 
neighbors  would  only  let  him  alone.  But  he  was  brought 
at  more  than  one  point  into  especial  collision  with  Russia. 
Many  of  the  pi-ovinces  he  ruled  over  in  European  Turkey 
were  of  Sclavonian  race,  and  of  the  religion  of  the  Greek 
Church.  They  were  thus  affined  by  a  double  tie  to  the  Rus- 
sian people,  and  therefore  the  manner  in  which  Turkey  dealt 
with  those  provinces  was  a  constant  source  of  dispute  be- 
tween Russia  and  her.  The  Russians  are  a  profoundly  re- 
ligious people.  No  matter  what  one  may  think  of  their 
form  of  faith,  no  matter  how  he  may  sometimes  observe  that 
religious  profession  contrasts  with  the  daily  habits  of  life, 
yet  he  cannot  but  see  that  the  Russian  character  is  steeped 
in  religious  faith  or  fanaticism.  To  the  Russian  fanatic  there 
was  something  intolerable  in  the  thought  of  a  Sclave  popu- 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  439 

lation  professing  the  religion  of  the  orthodox  Church  being 
persecuted  by  the  Turks.  No  Russian  ruler  could  hope  to 
be  popular  who  ventured  to  show  a  disregard  for  the  na- 
tional sentiment  on  this  subject.  The  Christian  popula- 
tions of  Turkey  were  to  the  Russian  sovereigns  what  the 
Germans  of  Schleswig  -  Holstein  were  to  the  great  German 
princes  of  later  years,  an  indirect  charge  to  which  they 
could  not,  if  they  would,  profess  any  indifference.  A  Ger- 
man prince,  in  order  to  be  popular,  had  to  proclaim  him- 
self enthusiastic  about  the  cause  of  Schleswig -Holstein ; 
a  Russian  emperor  could  not  be  loved  if  he  did  not  declare 
his  undying  resolve  to  be  the  protector  of  the  Christian 
populations  of  Turkey.  Much  of  this  was  probably  sincere 
and  single-minded  on  the  part  of  the  Russian  people  and 
most  of  the  Russian  politicians.  But  the  other  States  of 
Europe  began  to  suspect  that  mingled  up  with  benign  ideas 
of  protecting  the  Christian  populations  of  Turkey  might  be 
a  desire  to  extend  the  frontier  of  Russia  to  the  southward 
in  a  new  direction.  Europe  had  seen  by  what  craft  and 
what  audacious  enterprises  Russia  had  managed  to  extend 
her  empire  to  the  sea  in  other  quarters ;  it  began  to  be  com- 
monly believed  that  her  next  object  of  ambition  would  be 
the  possession  of  Constantinople  and  the  Bosphorus.  It  was 
reported  that  a  will  of  Peter  the  Great  had  left  it  as  an  in- 
junction to  his  successors  to  turn  all  the  efforts  of  their  pol- 
icy toward  that  object.  The  particular  document  which 
was  believed  to  be  a  will  of  Peter  the  Great  enjoined  on  all 
succeeding  Russian  sovereigns  never  to  relax  in  the  extension 
of  their  territory  northward  on  the  Baltic  and  southward  on 
the  Black  Sea  shores,  and  to  encroach  as  far  as  possible  in 
the  direction  of  Constantinople  and  the  Indies.  "To  work 
out  this,  raise  wars  continually — at  one  time  against  Turkey, 
at  another  against  Persia;  make  dock-yards  on  the  Black 
Sea;  by  degrees  make  yourselves  masters  of  that  sea  as  well 
as  of  the  Baltic;  hasten  the  decay  of  Persia,  and  penetrate 
to  the  Persian  Gulf;  establish,  if  possible,  the  ancient  com- 
merce of  the  East  via  Syria,  and  push  on  to  the  Indies,  which 
are  the  entrepot  of  the  world.  Once  there,  you  need  not 
fear  the  gold  of  England."  We  now  know  that  the  alleged 
will  was  not  genuine ;  but  there  could  be  little  doubt  that 
the  policy  of  Peter  and  of  his  great  follower,  Catherine, 


440  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

would  have  been  in  thorough  harmony  with  such  a  project. 
It  therefore  seemed  to  be  the  natural  business  of  other  Euro- 
pean Powers  to  see  that  the  defects  of  the  Ottoman  Govern- 
ment, such  as  they  were,  should  not  be  made  an  excuse  for 
helping  Russia  to  secure  the  objects  of  her  special  ambition. 
One  Great  Power,  above  all  the  rest,  had  an  interest  in 
watching  over  every  movement  that  threatened  in  any  way 
to  interfere  with  the  highway  to  India;  still  more  with  her 
peaceful  and  secure  possession  of  India  itself.  That  Power, 
of  course,  was  England.  England,  Russia,  and  Turkey  were 
alike  in  one  respect :  they  were  all  Asiatic  as  well  as  Euro- 
pean powers.  But  Turkey  could  never  come  into  any  man- 
ner of  collision  with  the  interests  of  England  i,n  the  East. 
The  days  of  Turkey's  interfering  with  any  great  State  were 
long  over.  Neither  Russia  nor  England  nor  any  other  Pow- 
er in  Europe  or  Asia  feared  her  any  more.  On  the  contrary, 
there  seemed  something  like  a  natural  antagonism  between 

3  o 

England  and  Russia  in  the  East.  The  Russians  were  ex- 
tending their  frontier  toward  that  of  our  Indian  empire. 
They  were  showing  in  that  quarter  the  same  mixture  of 
craft  and  audacity  which  had  stood  them  in  good  stead  in 
various  parts  of  Europe.  Our  officers  and  diplomatic  emis- 
saries reported  that  they  were  continually  confronted  by 
the  evidences  of  Russian  intrigue  in  Central  Asia.  We 
have  already  seen  how  much  influence  the  real  or  supposed 
intrigues  of  Russia  had  in  directing  our  policy  in  Afghan- 
istan. Doubtless  there  was  some  exaggeration  and  some 
panic  in  all  the  tales  that  were  told  of  Russian  intrigue. 
Sometimes  the  alarm  spread  by  these  tales  conjured  up  a 
kind  of  Russian  hobgoblin,  bewildering  the  minds  of  public 
servants,  and  making  even  statesmen  occasionally  seem  like 
affrighted  children.  The  question  that  at  present  concerns 
us  is  not  whether  all  the  apprehensions  of  danger  from  Rus- 
sia were  just  and  reasonable,  but  whether,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  did  exist.  They  certainly  counted  for  a  great  deal  in 
determining  the  attitude  of  the  English  people  toward  both 
Turkey  and  Russia.  It  was  in  great  measure  out  of  these 
alarms  that  there  grew  up  among  certain  statesmen  and 
classes  in  this  country  the  conviction  that  the  maintenance 
of  the  integrity  of  the  Turkish  empire  was  part  of  the  na- 
tional duty  of  England. 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  441 

It  is  not  too  much,  therefore,  to  say  that  the  States  of  Eu- 
rope generally  desired  the  maintenance  of  the  Ottoman  em- 
pire, simply  because  it  was  believed  that  while  Turkey  held 
her  place  she  was  a  barrier  against  vague  dangers,  which  it 
was  not  worth  while  encountering  as  long  as  they  could  pos- 
sibly be  averted.  Sharply  defined,  the  condition  of  things 
was  this :  Russia,  by  reason  of  her  sympathy  of  religion  or 
race  with  Turkey's  Christian  populations,  was  brought  into 
chronic  antagonism  with  Turkey  ;  England,  by  reason  of  her 
Asiatic  possessions,  was  kept  in  just  the  same  state  of  antag- 
onism to  Russia.  The  position  of  England  was  trying  and 
difficult.  She  felt  herself  compelled,  by  the  seeming  neces- 
sity of  her  national  interests,  to  maintain  the  existence  of  a 
Power  which  on  its  own  merits  stood  condemned,  and  for 
which,  as  a  Power,  no  English  statesman  ever  cared  to  say  a 
word.  The  position  of  Russia  had  more  plausibility  about 
it.  It  sounded  better  when  described  in  an  official  document 
or  a  popular  appeal.  Russia  was  the  religious  State  which 
had  made  it  her  mission  and  her  duty  to  protect  the  suffer- 
ing Christians  of  Turkey.  England,  let  her  state  her  case  no 
matter  how  carefully  or  frankly,  could  only  affirm  that  her 
motive  in  opposing  Russia  was  the  protection  of  her  own  in- 
terests. One  inconvenient  result  of  this  condition  of  things 
was  that  here,  among  English  people,  there  was  always  a 
wide  diffei-ence  of  opinion  as  to  the  national  policy  with  re- 
gard to  Russia  and  Turkey.  Many  public  men  of  great  abil- 
ity and  influence  were  of  opinion  that  England  had  no  right 
to  uphold  the  Ottoman  Power  because  of  any  fancied  danger 
that  might  come  to  us  from  its  fall.  It  was  the  simple  duty 
of  England,  they  insisted,  to  be  just  and  fear  not.  In  pri- 
vate life,  they  contended,  we  should  all  abhor  a  man  who  as- 
sisted a  ruffian  to  live  in  a  house  which  he  had  only  got  into 
as  a  burglar,  merely  because  there  was  a  chance  that  the 
dispossession  of  the  ruffian  might  enable  his  patron's  rival 
in  business  to  become  the  owner  of  the  premises.  The  duty, 
they  insisted,  of  a  conscientious  man  is  clear.  He  must  not 
patronize  a  ruffian,  whatever  comes.  Let  what  will  happen, 
that  he  must  not  do.  So  it  was,  according  to  their  argu- 
ment, with  national  policy.  We  are  not  concerned  in  dis- 
cussing this  question  just  now;  we  are  merely  acknowledg- 
ing a  fact  which  came  to  be  of  material  consequence  when 

19* 


442  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

the  crisis  arose  that  threw  England  into  sudden  antagonism 
with  Russia. 

That  crisis  came  about  during  the  later  years  of  the  reign 
of  the  Emperor  Nicholas.  He  saw  its  opening,  but  not  the 
close  of  even  its  first  volume.  Nicholas  was  a  man  of  re- 
markable character.  He  had  many  of  the  ways  of  an  Asiatic 
despot.  He  had  a  strong  ambition,  a  fierce  and  fitful  tem- 
per, a  daring  but  sometimes,  too,  a  vacillating  will.  He  had 
many  magnanimous  and  noble  qualities,  and  moods  of  sweet- 
ness and  gentleness.  He  reminded  people  sometimes  of  an 
Alexander  the  Great;  sometimes  of  the  "Arabian  Nights" 
version  of  Haroun  Alraschid.  A  certain  excitability  ran 
through  the  temperament  of  all  his  house,  Avhich,  in  some  of 
its  members,  broke  into  actual  madness,  and  in  others  pre- 
vailed no  farther  than  to  lead  to  wild  outbreaks  of  temper 
such  as  those  that  often  convulsed  the  frame  and  distorted 
the  character  of  a  Charles  the  Bold  or  a  Cceur  de  Lion.  We 
cannot  date  the  ways  and  characters  of  Nicholas's  family 
from  the  years  of  Peter  the  Great.  We  must,  for  tolerably 
obvious  reasons,  be  content  to  deduce  their  origin  from  the 
reign  of  Catherine  II.  The  extraordinary  and  almost  un- 
paralleled conditions  of  the  early  married  life  of  that  much- 
injured,  much-injuring  woman,  would  easily  account  for  any 
aberrations  of  intellect  and  will  among  her  immediate  de- 
scendants. Her  son  was  a  madman  ;  there  was  madness,  or 
something  very  like  it,  among  the  brothers  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas.  The  Emperor  at  one  time  was  very  popular  in 
England.  He  had  visited  the  Queen,  and  he  had  impressed 
every  one  by  his  noble  presence,  his  lofty  stature,  his  singular 
personal  beauty,  his  blended  dignity  and  familiarity  of  man- 
ner. He  talked  as  if  he  had  no  higher  ambition  than  to  be 
in  friendly  alliance  with  England.  When  he  wished  to  con- 
vey his  impression  of  the  highest  degree  of  personal  loyalty 
and  honor,  he  always  spoke  of  the  word  of  an  English  gen- 
tleman. There  can,  indeed,  be  little  doubt  that  the  Emperor 
was  sincerely  anxious  to  keep  on  terms  of  cordial  friendship 
with  England  ;  and,  what  is  more,  had  no  idea  until  the  very 
last  that  the  way  he  was  walking  was  one  which  England 
could  not  consent  to  tread.  His  brother  and  predecessor 
had  been  in  close  alliance  with  England  ;  his  own  ideal  hero 
was  the  Dnke  of  Wellington;  he  had  made  up  his  mind  that 


THE  EASTEKN   QUESTION".  443 

when  the  division  of  the  spoils  of  Turkey  came  about,  Eng- 
land and  he  could  best  consult  for  their  own  interests  and 
the  peace  of  the  world  by  making  the  appropriation  a  mat- 
ter of  joint  arrangement. 

We  do  not  often  in  history  find  a  great  despot  explaining 
in  advance  and  in  irank  words  a  general  policy  like  that 
which  the  Emperor  Nicholas  cherished  with  regard  to  Tur- 
key. We  are  usually  left  to  infer  his  schemes  from  his  acts. 
Not  uncommonly  we  have  to  set  his  acts  and  the  fair  infer- 
ences from  them  against  his  own  positive  and  repeated  as- 
surances. But  in  the  case  of  the  Emperor  Nicholas  we  are 
left  in  no  such  doubt.  He  told  England  exactly  what  he 
proposed  to  do.  He  told  the  story  twice  over;  more  than 
that,  he  consigned  it  to  writing  for  our  clearer  understand- 
ing. When  he  visited  England  in  1844,  for  the  second  time, 
Nicholas  had  several  conversations  with  the  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington and  with  Lord  Aberdeen,  then  Foreign  Secretary, 
about  Turkey  and  her  prospects,  and  what  would  be  likely 
to  happen  in  the  case  of  her  dissolution,  which  he  believed 
to  be  imminent.  When  he  returned  to  Russia,  he  had  a 
memorandum  drawn  up  by  Count  Nesselrode,  his  Chancel- 
lor, embodying  the  views  which,  according  to  Nicholas's 
impressions,  were  entertained  alike  by  him  and  by  the  Brit- 
ish statesmen  with  whom  he  had  been  conversing.  Mr. 
King-lake  says  that  he  sent  this  document  to  England  with 
the  view  of  covering  his  retreat,  having  met  with  no  encour- 
agement from  the  English  statesmen.  Our  idea  of  the  mat- 
ter is  different.  It  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  the  Eng- 
lish statesmen  did  not  give  Nicholas  any  encouragement, 
or  at  least  that  they  did  not  intend  to  do  so;  but  it  seems 
clear  to  us  that  he  believed  they  had  done  so.  The  memo- 
randum drawn  up  by  Count  Nesselrode  is  much  more  like 
a  formal  reminder  or  record  of  a  general  and  oral  engage- 
ment than  a  withdrawal  from  a  proposal  which  was  evident- 
ly not  likely  to  be  accepted.  The  memorandum  set  forth 
that  Russia  and  England  were  alike  penetrated  by  the  con- 
viction that  it  was  for  their  common  interest  that  the  Otto- 
man empire  should  maintain  itself  in  its  existing  indepen- 
dence and  extent  of  territory,  and  that  they  had  an  equal  in- 
terest in  averting  all  the  dangers  that  might  place  its  safety 
in  jeopardy.  With  this  object,  the  memoi'andum  declared, 


444:  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  essential  point  was  to  suffer  the  Porte  to  live  in  repose 
without  needlessly  disturbing  it  by  diplomatic  bickering. 
Turkey,  however,  had  a  habit  of  constantly  breaking  her  en- 
gagements ;  and  the  memorandum  insisted  strongly  that 
while  she  kept  up  this  practice  it  was  impossible  for  her  in- 
tegrity to  be  secure ;  and  this  practice  of  hers  was  indulged 
in  because  she  believed  she  might  do  so  with  impunity, 
reckoning  on  the  mutual  jealousies  of  the  cabinets,  and 
thinking  that  if  she  failed  in  her  engagements  toward  one 
of  them,  the  rest  would  espouse  her  cause.  "As  soon  as  the 
Porte  shall  perceive  that  it  is  not  supported  by  the  other 
cabinets,  it  will  give  way,  and  the  differences  which  have 
arisen  will  be  arranged  in  a  conciliatory  manner,  without 
any  conflict  resulting  from  them."  The  memorandum  spoke 
of  the  imperative  necessity  of  Turkey  being  led  to  treat  her 
Christian  subjects  with  toleration  and  mildness.  On  such 
conditions  it  was  laid  down  that  England  and  Russia  must 
alike  desire  her  preservation ;  but  the  document  proceeded 
to  say  that,  nevertheless,  these  States  could  not  conceal  from 
themselves  the  fact  that  the  Ottoman  empire  contained 
within  itself  many  elements  of  dissolution,  and  that  unfore- 
seen events  might  at  any  time  hasten  its  fall.  "In  the  un- 
certainty which  hovers  over  the  future,  a  single  fundamental 
idea  seems  to  admit  of  a  really  practical  application ;  that 
is,  that  the  danger  which  may  result  from  a  catastrophe  in 
Turkey  will  be  much  .diminished  if  in  the  event  of  its  occur- 
ring Russia  and  England  have  come  to  an  understanding  as 
to  the  course  to  be  taken  by  them  in  common.  That  under- 
standing will  be  the  more  beneficial  inasmuch  as  it  will 
have  the  full  assent  of  Austria,  between  whom  and  Russia 
there  already  exists  an  entire  accord."  This  document  was 
sent  to  London,  and  kept  in  the  archives  of  the  Foreign  Of- 
fice. It  was  only  produced  and  made  public  when,  at  a 
much  later  day,  the  Russian  press  began  to  insist  that  the 
English  Government  had  always  been  in  possession  of  the 
views  of  Russia  in  regard  to  Turkey.  It  seems  to  us  evi- 
dent that  the  Emperor  of  Russia  really  believed  that  his 
views  were  shared  by  English  statesmen.  The  mere  fact 
that  his  memorandum  was  received  and  retained  in  the  Eng- 
lish Foreign  Office  might  well  of  itself  tend  to  make  Nicho- 
las assume  that  its  principles  were  recognized  by  the  Eng- 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION,  445 

lish  Government  as  the  basis  of  a  common  action,  or  at  least 
a  common  understanding,  between  England  and  Russia. 
Nothing  is  more  easy  than  to  allow  a  fanatic  or  a  man  of 
one  idea  to  suppose  that  those  to  whom  he  explains  his 
views  are  convinced  by  him  and  in  agreement  with  him. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  listen  and  say  nothing.  Therefore, 
it  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  English  statesmen  should  have 
listened  to  Nicholas  without  saying  something  very  distinct 
to  show  that  they  were  not  admitting  or  accepting  any  com- 
bination or  purpose ;  or  that  they  should  have  received  his 
memorandum  without  some  distinct  disclaimer  of  their  be- 
ing in  any  way  bound  by  its  terms.  Some  of  the  statements 
in  the  memorandum  were,  at  the  least,  sufficiently  remarka- 
ble to  have  called  for  comment  of  some  kind  from  the  Eng- 
lish statesmen  who  received  it.  For  example,  the  Emperor 
of  Russia  professed  to  have  in  his  hands  not  alone  the  policy 
of  Russia,  but  that  of  Austria  as  well.  He  spoke  for  Aus- 
tria, and  he  stated  that  he  understood  himself  to  be  speak- 
ing for  England  too.  Accordingly,  England,  Austria,  and 
Russia  were,  in  his  understanding,  entering  into  a  secret 
conspiracy  among  themselves  for  the  disposal  of  the  terri- 
tory of  a  friendly  Power  in  the  event  of  that  Power  getting 
into  difficulties.  This  might  surely  be  thought  by  the  Eng- 
lish statesmen  to  bear  an  ominous  and  painful  resemblance 
to  the  kind  of  pourparlers  that  were  going  on  between  Rus- 
sia, Prussia,  and  Austria  before  the  partition  of  Poland,  and 
might  well  have  seemed  to  call  for  a  strong  and  unmistak- 
able repudiation  on  the  part  of  England.  We  could  scarce- 
ly have  been  too  emphatic  or  too  precise  in  conveying  to 
the  Emperor  of  Russia  our  determination  to  have  nothing 
to  do  with  any  such  conspiracy. 

Time  went  on,  and  the  Emperor  thought  he  saw  an  occa-- 
sion  for  still  more  clearly  explaining  his  plans  and  for  reviv- 
ing the  supposed  understanding  with  England.  Lord  Aber- 
deen came  into  office  as  Prime-minister  of  this  country — Lord 
Aberdeen,  who  was  Foreign  Secretary  when  Nicholas  was  in 
England  in  1844.  On  January  9th,  1853,  before  the  re-elec- 
tions which  were  consequent  upon  the  new  ministerial  ap- 
pointments had  yet  taken  place,  the  Emperor  met  our  min- 
ister, Sir  G.  Hamilton  Seymour,  at  a  party  given  by  the  Arch- 
duchess Helen,  at  her  palace  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  he  drew 


446  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

him  aside,  and  began  to  talk  with  him  in  the  most  outspoken 
manner  about  the  future  of  Turkey,  and  the  arrangements  it 
might  be  necessary  for  England  and  Russia  to  make  regard- 
ing it.  The  conversation  was  renewed  again  and  again  af- 
terward. Few  conversations  have  had  greater  fame  than 
these.  One  phrase  which  the  Emperor  employed  has  passed 
into  the  familiar  political  language  of  the  world.  As  long 
as  there  is  memory  of  an  Ottoman  empire  in  Europe,  so  long 
the  Turkey  of  the  days  before  the  Crimean  War  will  be  call- 
ed "  the  sick  man."  "  We  have  on  our  hands,"  said  the  Em- 
peror, "  a  sick  man — a  very  sick  man  ;  it  will  be  a  great  mis- 
fortune if  one  of  these  days  he  should  slip  away  from  us  be- 
fore the  necessary  arrangements  have  been  made."  The  con- 
versations all  tended  toward  the  one  purpose.  The  Emperor 
urged  that  England  and  Russia  ought  to  make  arrangements 
beforehand  as  to  the  inheritance  of  the  Ottoman  in  Europe 
— before  what  he  regarded  as  the  approaching  and  inevita- 
ble day  when  the  sick  man  must  come  to  die.  The  Emperor 
explained  that  he  did  not  contemplate  nor  would  he  allow  a 
permanent  occupation  of  Constantinople  by  Russia ;  nor,  on 
the  other  hand,  would  he  consent  to  see  that  city  held  by 
England  or  France,  or  any  other  Great  Power.  He  would 
not  listen  to  any  plans  for  the  reconstruction  of  Greece  in 
the  form  of  a  Byzantine  empire,  nor  would  he  allow  Turkey 
to  be  split  up  into  little  republics — asylums,  as  he  said,  for 
the  Kossuths  and  Mazzinis  of  Europe.  It  was  not  made  very 
clear  what  the  Emperor  wished  to  have  done  with  Constan- 
tinople, if  it  was  not  to  be  Russian,  nor  Turkish,  nor  English, 
nor  French,  nor  Greek,  nor  yet  a  little  republic  ;  but  it  was 
evident,  at  all  events,  that  Nicholas  had  made  up  his  mind  as 
to  what  it  was  not  to  be.  He  thought  that  Servia  and  Bul- 
garia might  become  independent  States;  that  is  to  say,  in- 
dependent States,  such  as  he  considered  the  Danubian  Prin- 
cipalities then  to  be,  "under  my  protection."  If  the  reor- 
ganization of  South-eastern  Europe  made  it  seem  necessary 
to  England  that  she  should  take  possession  of  Egypt,  the  Em- 
peror said  he  should  offer  no  objection.  He  said  the  same 
thing  of  Candia:  if  England  desired  to  have  that  island,  he 
saw  no  objection.  He  did  not  ask  for  any  formal  treaty,  he 
said ;  indeed,  such  arrangements  as  that  are  not  generally 
consigned  to  formal  treaties ;  be  only  wished  for  such  an  un- 


THE  EASTERN   QUESTION.  447 

derstanding  as  might  be  come  to  among  gentlemen,  as  he 
was  satisfied  that  if  he  had  ten  minutes'  conversation  with 
Lord  Aberdeen  the  thing  could  be  easily  settled.  If  only 
England  and  Russia  could  arrive  at  an  understanding  on  the 
subject,  he  declared  that  it  was  a  matter  of  indifference  to 
him  what  other  Powers  might  think  or  say.  He  spoke  of 
the  several  millions  of  Christians  in  Turkey  whose  rights  he 
was  called  upon  to  watch  over,  and  he  remarked  —  the  re- 
mark is  of  significance  —  that  the  right  of  watching  over 
them  was  secured  to  him  by  treaty. 

The  Emperor  was  evidently  under  the  impression  that  the 
interests  of  England  and  of  Russia  were  united  in  this  pro- 
posed transaction.  He  had  no  idea  of  anything  but  the  most 
perfect  frankness,  so  far  as  we  were  concerned.  It  clearly 
had  not  occurred  to  him  to  suspect  that  there  could  be  any- 
thing dishonorable,  anything  England  might  recoil  from,  in 
the  suggestion  that  the  two  Powers  ought  to  enter  into  a 
plot  to  divide  the  sick  man's  goods  between  them  while  the 
breath  was  yet  in  the  sick  man's  body.  It  did  not  even  occur 
to  him  that  there  could  be  anything  dishonorable  in  enter- 
ing into  such  a  compact  without  the  knowledge  of  any  other 
of  the  great  European  Powers.  The  Emperor  desired  to  act 
like  a  man  of  honor ;  but  the  idea  of  Western  honor  was  as 
yet  new  to  Russia,  and  it  had  not  quite  got  possession  of  the 
mind  of  Nicholas.  He  was  like  the  savage  who  is  ambitious 
of  learning  the  ways  of  civilization,  and  who  may  be  counted 
on  to  do  whatever  he  knows  to  be  in  accordance  with  these 
ways,  but  who  is  constantly  liable  to  make  a  mistake,  simply 
from  not  knowing  how  to  apply  them  in  each  new  emer- 
gency. The  very  consequences  which  came  from  Nicho- 
las's confidential  communications  with  our  minister  would 
of  themselves  testify  to  his  sincerity,  and  in  a  certain  sense 
to  his  simplicity.  But  the  English  Government  never,  after 
the  disclosure  of  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour,  put  any  faith  in  Nich- 
olas. They  regarded  him  as  nothing  better  than  a  plotter. 
They  did  not,  probably,  even  make  allowance  enough  for  the 
degree  of  religious  or  superstitious  fervor  which  accompanied 
and  qualified  all  his  ambition  and  his  craft.  Human  nature 
is  so  oddly  blent  that  we  ought  not  to  be  surprised  if  we  find 
a  very  high  degree  of  fanatical  and  sincere  fervor  in  com- 
pany with  a  crafty  selfishness.  The  English  Government  and 


448  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

most  of  the  English  people  ever  after  looked  on  Nicholas  as  a 
determined  plotter  and  plunderer,  who  was  not  to  be  made 
an  associate  in  any  engagement.  On  the  other  hand,  Nich- 
olas was  as  much  disappointed  as  an  honest  highwayman  of 
the  days  of  Captain  Macheath  might  have  been  who,  on 
making  a  handsome  offer  of  a  share  in  a  new  enterprise  to 
a  trusted  and  familiar  "  pal,"  finds  that  the  latter  is  taken 
with  a  fit  of  virtuous  indignation,  and  is  hurrying  off  to  Bow 
Street  to  tell  the  whole  story. 

The  English  minister  and  the  English  Government  could 
only  answer  the  Emperor's  overtures  by  saying  that  they 
did  not  think  it  quite  usual  to  enter  into  arrangements  for 
the  spoliation  of  a  friendly  Power,  and  that  England  had  no 
desire  to  succeed  to  any  of  the  possessions  of  Turkey.  The 
Emperor,  doubtless,  did  not  believe  these  assurances.  He 
probably  felt  convinced  that  England  had  some  game  of  her 
own  in  hand  into  which  she  did  not  find  it  convenient  to  ad- 
mit him  on  terms  of  partnership.  He  must  have  felt  bitterly 
annoyed  at  the  Ihought  that  he  had  committed  himself  so 
far  for  nothing.  The  communications,  were  of  course,  under- 
stood to  be  strictly  confidential ;  and  Nicholas  had  no  fear 
that  they  would  be  given  to  the  public  at  that  time.  They 
were,  in  fact,  not  made  publicly  known  for  more  than  a  year 
after.  But  Nicholas  had  the  dissatisfaction  of  knowing  that 
her  Majesty's  ministers  were  now  in  possession  of  his  designs. 
He  had  the  additional  discomfort  of  believing  that  while  he 
had  shown  his  hand  to  them,  they  had  contrived  to  keep 
whatever  designs  of  their  own  they  were  preparing  a  com- 
plete secret  from  him.  One  unfortunate  admission,  the  sig- 
nificance of  which  will  be  seen  hereafter,  was  made  on  the 
part  of  the  English  Government  during  the  correspondence 
caused  by  the  conversation  between  the  Emperor  and  Sir 
Hamilton  Seymour.  It  was  Lord  John  Russell  who,  inad- 
vertently no  doubt,  made  this  admission.  In  his  letter  to  Sir 
Hamilton  Seymour  on  February  9th,  1853,  he  wound  up  with 
the  words/ "The  more  the  Turkish  Government  adopts  the 
rules  of  impartial  law  and  equal  administration,  the  less  will 
the  Emperor  of  Russia  find  it  necessary  to  apply  that  ex- 
ceptional protection  which  his  Imperial  Majesty  has  found 
so  burdensome  and  inconvenient,  though  no  doubt  prescribed 
by  duty  and  sanctioned  by  treaty." 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  449 

These  conversations  with  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour  formed 
but  an  episode  in  the  history  of  the  events  that  were  then 
going  on.  It  was  an  episode  of  great  importance,  even  to 
the  immediate  progress  of  the  events,  and  it  had  much  to  do 
with  the  turn  they  took  toward  war;  but  there  were  great 
forces  moving  toward  antagonism  in  the  South-east  of  Eu- 
rope that  must,  in  any  case,  have  come  into  collision.  Russia, 
with  her  ambitions,  her  tendency  to  enlarge  her  frontier  on 
all  sides,  and  her  natural  sympathies  of  race  and  religion 
with  the  Christian  and  Sclave  populations  under  Turkish 
rule,  must  before  long  have  come  into  active  hostility  with 
the  Porte.  Even  at  the  present  somewhat  critical  time  we 
are  not  under  any  necessity  to  persuade  ourselves  that 
Russia  was  actuated  in  the  movements  she  made  by  merely 
selfish  ambition  and  nothing  else ;  that  all  the  wrong  was 
on  her  side  of  the  quarrel,  and  all  the  right  upon  ours.  It 
may  be  conceded,  without  any  abrogation  of  patriotic  Eng- 
lish sentiment,  that  in  standing  up  for  the  populations  so 
closely  affined  to  her  in  race  and  religion,  Russia  was  acting 
very  much  as  England  would  have  acted  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances. If  we  can  imagine  a  number  of  English  and 
Christian  populations  under  the  sway  of  some  Asiatic  despot 
on  the  frontiers  of  our  Indian  empire,  we  shall  admit  that  it 
is  likely  the  sentiments  of  all  Englishmen  in  India  would  be 
extremely  sensitive  on  their  behalf,  and  that  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  get  us  to  believe  that  we  were  called  upon  to 
interfere  for  their  protection.  Certainly  any  one  who  should 
try  to  persuade  us  that  after  all  these  Englishmen  were 
nearly  as  well  off  under  the  Asiatic  and  despotic  rule  as 
many  other  people,  or  as  they  deserved  to  be,  would  not 
have  much  chance  of  a  patient  hearing  from  us. 

The  Russian  Emperor  fell  back  a  little  after  the  failure  of 
his  efforts  with  Sir  Hamilton  Seymour,  and  for  awhile  seem- 
ed to  agree  with  the  English  Government  as  to  the  necessity 
of  not  embarrassing  Turkey  by  pressing  too  severely  upon 
her.  He  was,  no  doubt,  seriously  disappointed  when  he 
found  that  England  would  not  go  with  him;  and  his  cal- 
culations were  put  out  by  the  discovery.  He  therefore  saw 
himself  compelled  to  act  with  a  certain  moderation  while 
feeling  his  way  to  some  other  mode  of  attack.  But  the 
natural  forces  which  were  in  operation  did  not  depend  on 


450  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

the  will  of  any  empire  or  government  for  their  tendency. 
Nicholas  would  have  had  to  move  in  any  case.  There  is 
really  no  such  thing  in  modern  politics  as  a  genuine  autocrat. 
Nicholas  of  Russia  could  no  more  afford  to  overlook  the 
evidences  of  popular  and  national  feeling  among  his  people 
than  an  English  sovereign  could.  He  was  a  despot  by 
virtue  of  the  national  will  which  he  embodied.  The  nation- 
al will  was  in  decided  antagonism  to  the  tendencies  of  the 
Ottoman  Power  in  Europe;  and  afterward  to  the  policy 
which  the  English  Government  felt  themselves  compelled 
to  adopt  for  the  support  of  that  Power  against  the  schemes 
of  the  Emperor  of  Russia. 

There  had  long  been  going  on  a  dispute  about  the  Holy 
Places  in  Palestine.  The  claims  of  the  Greek  Church  and 
those  of  the  Latin  Church  were  in  antagonism  there.  The 
Emperor  of  Russia  was  the  protector  of  the  Greek  Church  ; 
the  Kings  of  France  had  long  had  the  Latin  Church  under 
their  protection.  France  had  never  taken  our  views  as  to 
the  necessity  of  maintaining  the  Ottoman  Power  in  Europe. 
On  the  contrary,  as  we  have  seen,  the  policy  of  England  and 
that  of  France  were  so  decidedly  opposed  at  the  time  when 
France  favored  the  independence  of  Egypt,  and  England 
would  not  hear  of  it,  that  the  two  countries  very  nearly 
came  to  war.  Nor  did  France  really  feel  any  very  profound 
sympathy  with  the  pretensions  which  the  Latin  monks  were 
constantly  making  in  regard  to  the  Holy  Places.  There  was, 
unquestionably,  downright  religious  fanaticism  on  the  part 
of  Russia  to  back  up  the  demands  of  the  Greek  Church;  but 
we  can  hardly  believe  that  opinion  in  France  or  in  the  cabi- 
nets of  French  ministers  really  concerned  itself  much  about 
the  Latin  monks,  except  in  so  far  as  political  purposes  might 
be  subserved  by  paying  some  attention  to  them.  But  it 
happened  somewhat  unfortunately  that  the  French  Govern- 
ment began  to  be  unusually  active  in  pushing  the  Latin 
claims  just  then.  The  whole  dispute  on  which  the  fortunes 
of  Europe  seemed  for  awhile  to  depend  was  of  a  strangely 
medieval  character.  The  Holy  Places  to  which  the  Latins 
raised  a  claim  were  the  great  Church  in  Bethlehem ;  the 
Sanctuary  of  the  Nativity,  with  the  right  to  place  a  new 
star  there  (that  which  formerly  ornamented  it  having  been 
lost) ;  the  Tomb  of  the  Virgin  ;  the  Stone  of  Anointing;  the 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  451 

Seven  Arches  of  the  Virgin  in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sep- 
ulchre, lu  the  reign  of  that  remarkably  pious,  truthful,  and 
virtuous  monarch,  Francis  the  First  of  France,  a  treaty  was 
made  with  the  Sultan  by  which  France  was  acknowledged 
the  protector  of  the  Holy  Places  in  Palestine,  and  of  the 
monks  of  the  Latin  Church  who  took  on  themselves  the  care 
of  the  sacred  monuments  and  memorials.  But  the  Greek 
Church  afterward  obtained  firmans  from  the  Sultan ;  each 
Sultan  gave  away  privileges  very  much  as  it  pleased  him, 
and  without  taking  much  thought  of  the  manner  in  which 
his  firman  might  affect  the  treaties  of  his  predecessors ;  and 
the  Greeks  claimed,  on  the  strength  of  these  concessions, 
that  they  had  as  good  a  right  as  the  Latins  to  take  care  of 
the  Holy  Places.  Disputes  were  always  arising,  and  of 
course  these  were  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  France  was 
supposed  to  be  concerned  in  the  protection  of  one  set  of  dis- 
putants and  Russia  in  that  of  another.  The  French  and  the 
Russian  Governments  did,  in  point  of  fact,  interfere  from 
time  to  time  for  the  purpose  of  making  good  their  claims. 
The  claims  at  length  came  to  be  identified  with  the  States 
which  respectively  protected  them.  An  advantage  of  the 
smallest  kind  gained  by  the  Latins  was  viewed  as  an  insult 
to  Russia;  a  concession  to  the  Greeks  was  a  snub  to  France. 
The  subject  of  controversy  seemed  trivial  and  odd  in  itself. 
But  it  had  even  in  itself  a  profounder  significance  than  many 
a  question  of  diplomatic  etiquette  which  has  led  great  States 
to  the  verge  of  war  or  into  war  itself.  Mr.  Kinglake,  whose 
brilliant  history  of  the  Invasion  of  the  Crmiea  is  too  often 
disfigured  by  passages  of  solemn  and  pompous  monotony, 
has  superfluously  devoted  several  eloquent  pages  to  prove 
that  the  sacredness  of  association  attaching  to  some  partic- 
ular spot  has  its  roots  in  the  very  soil  of  human  nature. 
The  custody  of  the  Holy  Places  was,  in  this  instance,  a  sym- 
bol of  a  religious  inheritance  to  the  monastic  disputants,  and 
of  political  power  to  the  diplomatists. 

It  was  France  which  first  stirred  the  controversy  in  the 
time  just  before  the  Crimean  War.  That  fact  is  beyond 
dispute.  Lord  John  Russell  had  hardly  come  into  office 
when  he  had  to  observe,  in  writing  to  Lord  Cowley,  our  am- 
bassador in  Paris,  that  "her  Majesty's  Government  cannot 
avoid  perceiving  that  the  ambassador  of  France  at  Constan- 


452  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tinople  was  the  first  to  disturb  the  status  quo  in  which  the 
matter  rested."  "  Not,"  Lord  John  Russell  went  on  to  say, 
"  that  the  disputes  of  the  Latin  and  Greek  Churches  were 
not  very  active,  but  without  some  political  action  on  the 
part  of  France  those  quarrels  would  never  have  troubled  the 
relations  of  friendly  Powers."  Lord  John  Russell  also  com- 
plained that  the  French  ambassador  was  the  first  to  speak 
of  having  recourse  to  force,  and  to  threaten  the  intervention 
of  a  French  fleet.  "  I  regret  to  say,"  the  despatch  continued, 
"  that  this  evil  example  has  been  partly  followed  by  Russia." 
The  French  Government  were,  indeed,  unusually  active  at 
that  time.  The  French  ambassador,  M.  de  Lavalette,  is  said 
to  have  threatened  that  a  French  fleet  should  appear  off 
Jaffa,  and  even  hinted  at  a  French  occupation  of  Jerusalem, 
"  when,"  as  he  significantly  put  it,  "  we  should  have  all  the 
sanctuaries."  One  French  army  occupying  Rome,  and  an- 
other occupying  Jerusalem,  would  have  left  the  world  in  no 
doubt  as  to  the  supremacy  of  France.  The  cause  of  all  this 
energy  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  Prince  President  had  only 
just  succeeded  in  procuring  himself  to  be  installed  as  Em- 
peror, and  he  was  very  anxious  to  distract  the  attention  of 
Frenchmen  from  domestic  politics  to  some  showy  and  star- 
tling policy  abroad.  He  was  in  quest  of  a  policy  of  advent- 
ure. This  controversy  between  the  Church  of  the  East  and 
the  Church  of  the  West  tempted  him  into  activity  as  one 
that  seemed  likely  enough  to  give  him  an  opportunity  of 
displaying  the  power  of  France  and  of  the  new  system  with- 
out any  very  gVeat  danger  or  responsibility.  Technically, 
therefore,  we  are  entitled  to  lay  the  blame  of  disturbing  the 
peace  of  Europe  in  the  first  instance  on  the  Emperor  of  the 
French.  But  while  we  must  condemn  the  restless  and  self- 
interested  spirit  which  thus  set  itself  to  stir  up  disturbance, 
we  cannot  help  seeing  that  the  quarrel  must  have  come  at 
some  time,  even  if  the  plebiscite  had  never  been  invited,  and 
a  new  Emperor  had  never  been  placed  upon  the  throne  of 
France.  The  Emperor  of  Russia  had  made  up  his  mind  that 
the  time  had  come  to  divide  the  property  of  the  sick  man, 
and  he  was  not  likely  to  remain  long  without  an  opportunity 
of  quarrelling  with  anyone  who  stood  at  the  side  of  the  sick 
man's  bed,  and  seemed  to  constitute  himself  a  protector  of 
the  sick  man's  interests. 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  453 

The  key  of  the  whole  controversy  out  of  which  the  East- 
ern war  arose,  and  out  of  which,  indeed,  all  subsequent  com- 
plications in  the  East  came  as  well,  was  said  to  be  found  in 
the  clause  of  the  Treaty  of  Kutchuk-Kainardji.  During  the 
negotiations  for  peace  that  took  place  in  Vienna  while  the 
Crimean  War  was  yet  going  on,  the  assembled  plenipoten- 
tiaries declared  that  the  whole  dispute  was  owing  to  a  mis- 
interpretation of  a  clause  in  this  unfortunate  treaty.  In  a 
time  much  nearer  to  our  own,  the  discussion  on  the  same 
clause  in  the  same  treaty  was  renewed  with  all  the  old  ear- 
nestness, and  with  the  same  diffei'ence  of  interpretation.  It 
may  not,  perhaps,  give  an  uninitiated  reader  any  very  exalt- 
ed opinion  of  the  utility  and  beauty  of  diplomatic  arrange- 
ments to  hear  that  disputes  covering  more  than  a  century 
of  time,  and  causing  at  least  two  great  wars,  arose  out  of 
the  impossibility  of  reconciling  two  different  interpretations 
of  the  meaning  of  two  or  three  lines  of  a  treaty.  The  Amer- 
ican Civil  War  was  said,  with  much  justice,  to  have  been 
fought  to  obtain  a  definition  of  the  limits  of  the  rights  of  the 
separate  States  as  laid  down  in  the  Constitution;  the  Cri- 
mean War  was  apparently  fought  to  obtain  a  satisfactory 
and  final  definition  of  the  seventh  clause  of  the  Treaty  of 
Kainardji;  and  it  did  not  fulfil  its  purpose.  The  historic 
value,  therefore,  of  this  seventh  clause  may  in  one  sense  be 
considered  greater  than  that  of  the  famous  disputed  words 
which  provoked  the  censure  of  the  Jansenists  and  the  immor- 
tal letters  of  Pascal. 

The  Treaty  of  Kutchuk-Kainardji  was  made  in  1774,  be- 
tween the  Ottoman  Porte  and  Catherine  II.  of  Russia.  On 
sea  and  land  the  arms  of  the  great  Empress  had  been  victo- 
rious. Turkey  was  beaten  to  her  knees.  She  had  to  give  up 
Azof  and  Taganrog  to  Russia,  and  to  declare  the  Crimea  in- 
dependent of  the  Ottoman  empire;  an  event  which,  it  is  al- 
most needless  to  say,  was  followed  not  many  years  after  by 
the  Russians  taking  the  Crimea  for  themselves  and  making 
it  a  province  of  Catherine's  empire.  The  Treaty  of  Kainar- 
dji, as  it  is  usually  called,  was  that  which  made  the  arrange- 
ments for  peace.  When  it  exacted  from  Turkey  such  heavy 
penalties  in  the  shape  of  cession  of  territory,  it  was  hardly 
supposed  that  one  seemingly  insignificant  clause  was  des- 
tined to  threaten  the  very  existence  of  the  Turkish  empire. 


454  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

The  treaty  bore  date  July  10th,  1774;  and  it  was  made,  so 
to  speak,  in  the  tent  of  the  victor.  The  seventh  clause  de- 
clared that  the  Sublime  Porte  promised  "  to  protect  con- 
stantly the  Christian  religion  and  its  churches;  and  also  to 
allow  the  minister  of  the  Imperial  Court  of  Russia  to  make, 
on  all  occasions,  representations  as  well  in  favor  of  the  new 
church  in  Constantinople,  of  which  mention  will  be  made  in 
the  fourteenth  article,  as  in  favor  of  those  who  officiate  there- 
in, promising  to  take  such  representations  into  due  consider- 
ation as  being  made  by  a  confidential  functionary  of  a  neigh- 
boring and  sincerely  friendly  Power."  Not  much  possibil- 
ity of  misunderstanding  about  these  words,  one  might  feel 
inclined  to  say.  We  turn  then  to  the  fourteenth  article  al- 
luded to,  in  order  to  discover  if  in  its  wording  lies  the  per- 
plexity of  meaning  which  led  to  such  momentous  and  calam- 
itous results.  We  find  that  by  this  article  it  is  simply  per- 
mitted to  the  court  of  Russia  to  build  a  public  church  of 
the  Greek  rite  in  the  Galata  quarter  of  Constantinople,  in 
addition  to  the  chapel  built  in  the  house  of  the  minister; 
and  it  is  declared  that  the  new  church  "shall  be  always  un- 
der the  protection  of  the  ministers  of  the  (Russian)  empire, 
and  shielded  from  all  obstruction  and  all  damage."  Here, 
then,  we  seem  to  have  two  clauses  of  the  simplest  meaning 
and  by  no  means  of  first-class  importance.  The  latter  clause 
allows  Russia  to  build  a  new  church  in  Constantinople  ;  the 
former  allows  the  Russian  minister  to  make  representations 
to  the  Porte  on  behalf  of  the  church  and  of  those  who  officiate 
in  it.  What  difference  of  opinion,  it  may  be  asked,  could 
possibly  arise  ?  The  difference  was  this :  Russia  claimed  a 
right  of  protectorate  over  all  the  Christians  of  the  Greek 
Church  in  Turkey  as  the  consequence  of  the  seventh  clause 
of  the  treaty.  She  insisted  that  when  Turkey  gave  her  a 
right  to  interfere  on  behalf  of  the  worshippers  in  one  par- 
ticular church,  the  same  right  extended  so  far  as  to  cover 
all  the  worshippers  of  the  same  denomination  in  every  part 
of  the  Ottoman  dominions.  The  great  object  of  Russia 
throughout  all  the  negotiations  that  preceded  the  Crimean 
War  was  to  obtain  from  the  Porte  an  admission  of  the  ex- 
istence of  such  a  protectorate.  Such  an  acknowledgment 
would,  in  fact,  have  made  the  Emperor  of  Russia  the  patron 
and  all  but  the  ruler  of  by  far  the  larger  proportion  of  the 


THE  EASTERN   QUESTION.  455 

populations  of  European  Turkey.  The  Sultan  would  no  long- 
er have  been  master  in  his  own  dominions.  The  Greek  Chris- 
tians would  naturally  have  regarded  the  Russian  Emperor's 
right  of  intervention  on  their  behalf  as  constituting  a  pro- 
tectorate far  more  powerful  than  the  nominal  rule  of  the 
Sultan.  They  would  have  known  that  the  ultimate  decision 
of  any  dispute  in  which  they  were  concerned  rested  with  the 
Emperor,  and  not  with  the  Sultan ;  and  they  would  soon 
have  come  to  look  upon  the  Emperor,  and  not  the  Sultan,  as 
their  actual  sovereign. 

Now  it  does  not  seem  likely,  on  the  face  of  things,  that 
any  ruler  of  a  state  would  have  consented  to  hand  over 
to  a  more  powerful  foreign  monarch  such  a  right  over  the 
great  majority  of  his  subjects.  Still,  if  Turkey,  driven  to 
her  last  defences,  had  no  alternative  but  to  make  such  a 
concession,  the  Emperors  of  Russia  could  not  be  blamed  for 
insisting  that  it  should  be  carried  out.  The  terms  of  the 
article  in  the  treaty  itself  certainly  do  not  seem  to  admit 
of  such  a  construction.  But  for  the  views  always  advo- 
cated by  Mr.  Gladstone,  we  should  say  it  was  self-evident 
that  the  article  never  had  any  such  meaning.  We  cannot, 
however,  dismiss  the  argument  of  such  a  man  as  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  if  it  were  unworthy  of  consideration,  or  say  that 
an  interpretation  is  obviously  erroneous  which  he  has  delib- 
erately and  often  declared  to  be  accurate.  We  may  as  well 
mention  here  at  once  that  Mr.  Gladstone  rests  his  argument 

O 

on  the  first  line  of  the  famous  article.  The  promise  of  the 
Sultan,  he  contends,  to  protect  constantly  the  Christian  re- 
ligion and  its  churches,  is  an  engagement  distinct  in  itself, 
and  disconnected  from  the  engagement  that  follows  in  the 
same  clause,  and  which  refers  to  the  new  building  and  its 
ministrauts.  The  Sultan  engages  to  protect  the  Christian 
churches ;  and  with  whom  does  he  enter  into  this  engage- 
ment? With  the  Sovereign  of  Russia.  Why  does  he  make 
this  engagement?  Because  he  has  been  defeated  by  Russia 
and  compelled  to  accept  terms  of  peace;  and  one  of  the  con- 
ditions on  which  he  is  admitted  to  peace  is  his  making  this 
engagement.  How  does  he  make  the  engagement  ?  By  an 
article  in  a  treaty  agreed  to  between  him  and  the  Sovereign 
of  Russia.  But  if  a  state  enters  into  treaty  engagement 
with  another  that  it  will  do  a  certain  thing,  it  is  clear  that 


456  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

the  other  state  must  have  a  special  right  of  remonstrance 
and  of  representation  if  the  thing  be  not  done.  Therefore 
Mr.  Gladstone  argues  that  as  the  Sultan  made  a  special 
treaty  with  Russia  to  protect  the  Christians,  he  gave,  in 
the  very  nature  of  things,  a  special  right  to  Russia  to  com- 
plain if  the  protection  was  not  given.  We  are  far  from  de- 
nying that  there  is  force  in  the  argument ;  and  it  is,  at  all 
events,  worthy  of  being  recorded  for  its  mere  historical  im- 
portance. But  Mr.  Gladstone's  was  certainly  not  the  Euro- 
pean interpretation  of  the  clause,  nor  does  it  seem  to  us  the 
interpretation  that  history  will  accept.  Lord  John  Russell, 
as  we  have  seen,  made  a  somewhat  unlucky  admission  that 
the  claims  of  Russia  to  protectorate  were  "  prescribed  by 
duty  and  sanctioned  by  treaty."  But  this  admission  seems 
rather  to  have  been  the  result  of  inadvertence  or  heedless- 
ness,  than  of  any  deliberate  intention  to  recognize  the  par- 
ticular claim  involved.  The  admission  was  afterward  made 
the  occasion  of  many  a  severe  attack  upon  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell by  Mr.  Disraeli  and  other  leading  members  of  the  Op- 
position. Assuredly,  Lord  John  Russell's  admission,  if  it  is 
really  to  be  regarded  as  such,  was  not  endorsed  by  the  Eng- 
lish Government.  Whenever  we  find  Russia  putting  the 
claim  into  plain  words,  we  find  England,  through  her  min- 
isters, refusing  to  give  it  their  acknowledgment.  During 
the  discussions  before  the  Crimean  War,  Lord  Clarendon, 
our  Foreign  Secretary,  wrote  to  Lord  Stratford  de  Redclifle 
a  letter  embodying  the  views  of  the  English  Government 
on  the  claim.  No  Sovereign,  Lord  Clarendon  says,  having 
a  due  regard  for  his  own  dignity  and  independence,  could 
admit  proposals  which  conferred  upon  a  foreign  and  more 
powerful  sovereign  a  right  of  protection  over  his  own  sub- 
jects. "If  such  a  concession  were  made,  the  result,"  as  Lord 
Clarendon  pointed  out,  "  would  be  that  fourteen  millions  of 
Greeks  would  henceforward  regard  the  Emperor  as  their  su- 
preme protector,  and  their  allegiance  to  the  Sultan  would  be 
little  more  than  nominal,  while  his  own  independence  would 
dwindle  into  vassalage.  Diplomacy,  therefore,  was  powerless 
to  do  good  during  all  the  protracted  negotiations  that  set  in, 
for  the  plain  reason  that  the  only  object  of  the  Emperor  of 
Russia  in  entering  upon  negotiation  at  all  was  one  which  the 
other  European  Powers  regarded  as  absolutely  inadmissible. 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  457 

The  dispute  about  the  Holy  Places  was  easily  settled. 
The  Porte  cared  very  little  about  the  matter,  and  was  will- 
ing enough  to  come  to  any  fair  terms  by  which  the  whole 
controversy  could  be  got  rid  of.  But  the  demands  of  Rus- 
sia went  on  just  as  before.  Prince  Mentschikoff,  a  man  of 
the  Potemkin  school,  fierce,  rough,  and  unable  or  unwilling 
to  control  his  temper,  was  sent  with  demands  to  Constanti- 
nople; and  his  very  manner  of  making  the  demands  seemed 
as  if  it  were  taken  up  for  the  purpose  of  insuring  their  re- 
jection. If  the  envoy  fairly  represented  the  sovereign,  the 
demands  must  have  been  so  conveyed  with  the  deliberate 
intention  of  immediately  and  irresistibly  driving  the  Turks 
to  reject  every  proposition  coming  from  such  a  negotiator. 
Mentschikoff  brought  his  proposals  with  him  cut  and  dry  in 
the  form  of  a  convention  which  he  called  upon  Turkey  to  ac- 
cept without  more  ado.  In  other  words,  he  put  a  pistol  at 
Turkey's  head  and  told  her  to  sign  at  once,  or  else  he  would 
pull  the  trigger.  Turkey  refused,  and  Prince  Mentschikoff 
withdrew  in  real  or  affected  rage,  and  presently  the  Emper- 
or Nicholas  sent  two  divisions  of  his  army  across  the  Pruth 
to  take  possession  of  the  Danubian  principalities. 

Diplomacy,  however,  did  not  give  in  even  then.  The  Em- 
peror announced  that  he  had  occupied  the  principalities  not 
as  an  act  of  war,  but  with  the  view  of  obtaining  material 
guarantees  for  the  concession  of  the  demands  which  Turkey 
had  already  declared  that  she  would  not  concede.  The  Eng- 
lish Government  advised  the  Porte  not  to  treat  the  occupa- 
tion as  an  act  of  war,  although  fully  admitting  that  it  was 
strictly  a  casus  belli,  and  that  Turkey  would  have  been  am- 
ply justified  in  meeting  it  by  an  armed  resistance  if  it  were 
prudent  for  her  to  do  so.  It  would,  of  course,  have  been 
treated  as  war  by  any  strong  Power.  We  might  well  have 
retorted  upon  Russia  the  harsh  but  not  wholly  unjustifiable 
language  she  had  employed  toward  us  when  we  seized  pos- 
session of  material  guarantees  from  the  Greek  Government 
in  the  harbor  of  the  Pira3us.  In  our  act,  however,  there  was 
less  of  that  which  constitutes  war  than  in  the  arbitrary  con- 
duct of  Russia.  Greece  did  not  declare  that  our  demands 
were  such  as  she  could  not  admit  in  principle.  She  did  ad- 
mit most  of  them  in  principle,  but  Avas  only,  as  it  seemed  to 
our  Government,  or  at  least  to  Lord  Palmerston,  trying  to 

I.— 20 


458  A   HISTORY   OF   OUK   OWN   TIMES. 

evade  an  actual  settlement.  There  was  nothing  to  go  to 
war  about;  and  our  seizure  of  the  ships,  objectionable  as  it 
was,  might  be  described  as  only  a  way  of  getting  hold  of 
a  material  guarantee  for  the  discharge  of  a  debt  which  was 
not  in  principle  disputed.  But  in  the  dispute  between  Rus- 
sia and  Turkey  the  claim  was  rejected  altogether;  it  was 
declared  intolerable;  its  principle  was  absolutely  repudiated, 
and  any  overt  act  on  the  part  of  Russia  must  therefore  have 
had  for  its  object  to  compel  Turkey  to  submit  to  a  demand 
which  she  would  yield  to  force  alone.  This  is,  of  course,  in 
the  very  spirit  of  war ;  and  if  Turkey  had  been  a  stronger 
Power,  she  would  never  have  dreamed  of  meeting  it  in  any 
other  way  than  by  an  armed  resistance.  She  was,  however, 
strongly  advised  by  England  and  other  Powers  to  adopt  a 
moderate  course;  and,  in  fact,  throughout  the  whole  of  the 
negotiations  she  showed  a  remarkable  self-control  and  a  dig- 

o  o 

nified  courtesy  which  must  sometimes  have  been  very  vex- 
ing to  her  opponent.  Diplomacy  went  to  work  again,  and  a 
Vienna  note  was  concocted  which  Russia  at  once  oifered  to 
accept.  The  four  great  Powers  who  were  carrying  on  the 
business  of  mediation  were  at  first  quite  charmed  with  the 
note,  with  the  readiness  of  Russia  to  accept  it,  and  with 
themselves;  and  but  for  the  interposition  of  Lord  Stratford 
de  Redcliflfe  it  seems  highly  probable  that  it  would  have 
been  agreed  to  by  all  the  parties  concerned.  Lord  Stratford, 
however,  saw  plainly  that  the  note  was  a  virtual  concession 
to  Russia  of  all  that  she  specially  desired  to  have,  and  all 
that  Europe  was  unwilling  to  concede  to  her.  The  great  ob- 
ject of  Russia  was  to  obtain  an  acknowledgment,  however 
vague  or  covert,  of  her  protectorate  over  the  Christians  of 
the  Greek  Church  in  the  Sultan's  dominions ;  and  the  Vien- 
na note  was  so  constructed  as  to  affirm,  much  rather  than 
to  deny,  the  claim  which  Russia  had  so  long  been  setting 
up.  Assuredly  such  a  note  could  at  some  future  time  have 
been  brought  out  in  triumph  by  Russia  as  an  overwhelm- 
ing evidence  of  the  European  recognition  of  such  a  protec- 
torate. 

Let  us  make  this  a  little  more  plain.  Suppose  the  ques- 
tion at  issue  were  as  to  the  payment  of  a  tribute  claimed  by 
one  prince  from  another.  The  one  had  been  always  insist- 
ing that  the  other  was  his  vassal,  bound  to  pay  him  tribute  ; 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  459 

the  other  always  repudiated  the  claim  in  principle.  This 
was  the  subject  of  dispute.  After  awhile  the  question  is  left 
to  arbitration,  and  the  arbitrators,  without  actually  declar- 
ing in  so  many  words  that  the  claim  to  the  tribute  is  estab- 
lished, yet  go  so  far  as  to  direct  the  payment  of  a  certain 
sum  of  money,  and  do  not  introduce  a  single  word  to  show 
that  in  their  opinion  the  original  claim  was  unjust  in  princi- 
ple. Would  not  the  claimant  of  the  tribute  be  fully  enti- 
tled in  after-years,  if  any  new  doubt  of  his  claim  were  raised, 
to  appeal  to  this  arbitration  as  confirming  it?  Would  he 
not  be  entitled  to  say, "  The  dispute  was  about  my  right  to 
tribute.  Here  is  a  document  awarding  to  me  the  payment 
of  a  certain  sum,  and  not  containing  a  word  to  show  that 
the  arbitrators  disputed  the  principle  of  my  claim.  Is  it 
possible  to  construe  that  otherwise  than  as  a  recognition  of 
my  claim  ?"  We  certainly  cannot  think  it  would  have  been 
otherwise  regarded  by  any  impartial  mind.  The  very  readi- 
ness with  which  Russia  consented  to  accept  the  Vienna  note 
ought  to  have  taught  its  framers  that  Russia  found  all  her 
account  in  its  vague  and  ambiguous  language.  The  Prince 
Consort  said  it  was  a  trap  laid  by  Russia  through  Austria ; 
and  it  seems  hardly  possible  to  regard  it  now  in  any  other 
light. 

The  Turkish  Government,  therefore,  acting  under  the  ad- 
vice of  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe,  our  ambassador  to  Con- 
stantinople, who  had  returned  to  his  post  after  a  long  ab- 
sence, declined  to  accept  the  Vienna  note  unless  with  consid- 
erable modifications.  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe  showed 
great  acuteness  and  force  of  character  throughout  all  these 
negotiations.  A  reader  of  Mr.  Kinglake's  history  is  some- 
times apt  to  become  nauseated  by  the  absurd  pompousness 
with  which  the  historian  overlays  his  descriptions  of  "  the 
great  Eltchi,"  as  he  is  pleased  to  call  him,  and  is  inclined 
to  wish  that  the  great  Eltchi  could  have  imparted  some  of 
his  own  sober  gravity  and  severe  simplicity  of  style  to  his 
adulator.  Mr.  Kinglake  writes  of  Lord  Stratford  de  Red- 
cliffe as  if  he  were  describing  the  all-compelling  movements 
of  some  divinity  or  providence.  A  devoted  imperial  histo- 
rian would  have  made  himself  ridiculous  by  writing  of  the 
great  Napoleon  at  the  height  of  his  power  in  language  of 
such  inflated  mysticism  as  this  educated  Englishman  has  al- 


460  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

lowed  himself  to  employ  when  describing  the  manner  in 
which  our  ambassador  to  Constantinople  did  his  duty  dur- 
ing the  days  before  the  Crimean  War.  But  the  extraordi- 
nary errors  of  taste  and  good-sense  into  which  Mr.  Kinglake 
occasionally  descends  cannot  prevent  us  from  doing  justice 
to  the  keen  judgment  and  the  inflexible  will  which  Lord 
Stratford  displayed  during  this  critical  time.  He  saw  the 
fatal  defect  of  the  note  which,  prepared  in  Paris,  had  been 
brought  to  its  supposed  perfection  at  Vienna,  and  had  there 
received  the  adhesion  of  the  English  Government  along 

o  o 

with  that  of  the  governments  of  the  other  Great  Powers 
engaged  in  the  conference.  A  hint  from  Lord  Stratford 
made  the  ministers  of  the  Porte  consider  it  with  suspicious 
scrutiny,  and  they  too  saw  its  weakness  and  its  conscious 
or  unconscious  treachery.  They  declared  that  unless  cer- 
tain modifications  were  introduced  they  would  not  accept 
the  note.  The  reader  will  at  first  think,  perhaps,  that  some 
of  these  modifications  were  mere  splittings  of  hairs,  and 
diplomatic,  worse  even  than  lawyer-like,  quibbles.  But,  in 
truth,  the  alterations  demanded  were  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance for  Turkey.  The  Porte  had  to  think,  not  of  the  im- 
mediate purpose  of  the  note,  but  of  the  objects  it  might  be 
made  to  serve  afterward.  It  contained,  for  instance,  words 
which  declared  that  the  Government  of  his  Majesty  the  Sul- 
tan would  remain  "faithful  to  the  letter  and  the  spirit  of 
the  stipulations  of  the  Treaties  of  Kainardji  and  of  Adri- 
anople,  relative  to  the  protection  of  the  Christian  religion." 
These  words,  in  a  note  drawn  up  for  the  purpose  of  satisfy- 
ing the  Emperor  of  Russia,  could  not  but  be  understood  as 
recognizing  the  interpretation  of  the  Treaty  of  Kainardji  on 
which  Russia  has  always  insisted.  The  Porte,  therefore, 
proposed  to  strike  out  these  words  and  substitute  the  fol- 
lowing:  "To  the  stipulations  of  the  Treaty  of  Kainardji, 
confirmed  by  that  of  Adrianople,  relative  to  the  protection 
by  the  Sublime  Porte  of  the  Christian  religion."  By  these 
words  the  Turkish  ministers  quietly  affirm  that  the  only 
protectorate  exercised  over  the  Christians  of  Turkey  is  that 
of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  himself.  The  difference  is  simply 
that  between  a  claim  conceded  and  a  claim  repudiated. 
The  Russian  Government  refused  to  accept  the  modifica- 
tions; and  in  arguing  against  them,  the  Russian  minister, 


THE   EASTERN   QUESTION.  461 

Count  Nesselrode,  made  it  clear  to  the  English  Government 
that  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe  was  right  when  he  held  the 
note  to  be  full  of  weakness  and  of  error.  For  the  Russian 
minister  argued  against  the  modifications  on  the  very  ground 
that  they  denied  to  the  claims  of  Russia  just  that  satisfac- 
tion that  the  statesmanship  arid  the  public  opinion  of  Europe 
had  always  agreed  to  refuse.  The  Prince  Consort's  expres- 
sion was  appropriate  :  the  Western  Powers  had  nearly  been 
caught  in  a  trap. 

From  that  time  all  hopes  of  peace  were  over.  There 
were,  to  be  sure,  other  negotiations  still.  A  ghastly  sem- 
blance of  faith  in  the  possibility  of  a  peaceful  arrangement 
was  kept  up  for  awhile  on  both  sides.  Little  plans  of  ad- 
justment were  tinkered  up  and  tried,  and  fell  to  pieces  the 
moment  they  were  tried.  It  is  not  necessary  for  us  to  de- 
scribe them.  Not  many  persons  put  any  faith  or  even  pro- 
fessed any  interest  in  them.  They  were  conducted  amidst 
the  most  energetic  preparations  for  war  on  both  sides.  Our 
troops  were  moving  toward  Malta;  the  streets  of  London, 
of  Liverpool,  of  Southampton,  and  other  towns,  were  ringing 
with  the  cheers  of  enthusiastic  crowds  gathered  together  to 
watch  the  marching  of  troops  destined  for  the  East.  Tur- 
key had  actually  declared  war  against  Russia.  People  now 
were  anxious  rather  to  see  how  the  war  would  open  between 
Russia  and  the  allies  than  when  it  would  open :  the  time 
when  could  evidently  only  be  a  question  of  a  few  days ;  the 
way  how  was  a  matter  of  more  peculiar  interest.  We  had 
known  so  little  of  war  for  nearly  forty  years,  that  added  to 
all  the  other  emotions  which  the  coming  of  battle  must  bring 
was  the  mere  feeling  of  curiosity  as  to  the  sensation  pro- 
duced by  a  state  of  war.  It  was  an  abstraction  to  the  living 
generation — a  thing  to  read  of  and  discuss  and  make  poetry 
and  romance  out  of;  but  they  could  not  yet  realize  what 
itself  was  like. 


462  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

WHERE   WAS   LORD    PALHERSTON  ? 

MEANTIME  where  was  Lord  Palmerston  V  He  of  all  men, 
one  Avould  think,  must  have  been  pleased  with  the  turn 
things  were  taking.  He  had  had  from  the  beginning  little 
faith  in  any  issue  of  the  negotiations  but  war.  Probably  he 
did  not  really  wish  for  any  other  result.  We  are  well  in- 
clined to  agree  with  Mr.  Kinglake,  that  of  all  the  members 
of  the  cabinet  he  alone  clearly  saw  his  way,  and  was  satis- 
fied with  the  prospect.  But,  according  to  the  supposed  nat- 
ure of  his  office,  he  had  now  nothing  to  do  with  the  war  or 
with  foreign  affairs,  except  as  every  member  of  the  cabinet 
shares  the  responsibilities  of  the  whole  body.  He  had  ap- 
parently about  as  much  to  do  with  the  war  as  the  Postmas- 
ter-general or  the  Chancellor  for  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster 
might  have.  He  had  accepted  the  office  of  Plome  Secretary ; 
he  had  declared  that  he  did  not  choose  to  be  Foreign  Secre- 
tary any  more.  He  affirmed  that  he  wanted  to  learn  some- 
thing about  home  affairs,  and  to  get  to  understand  his  coun- 
trymen, and  so  forth.  He  was  really  very  busy  all  this 
time  in  his  new  duties.  Lord  Palmerston  was  a  remarkably 
efficient  and  successful  Home  Secretary.  His  unceasing  ac- 
tivity loved  to  show  itself  in  whatever  department  he  might 
be  called  upon  to  occupy.  He  brought  to  the  somewhat 
prosaic  duties  of  his  new  office  not  only  all  the  virile  energy 
but  also  all  the  enterprise  which  he  had  formerly  shown  in 
managing  revolutions  and  dictating  to  foreign  courts.  The 
ticket-of-leave  system  dates  from  the  time  of  his  administra- 
tion. Our  transportation  system  had  broken  down ;  for,  in 
fact,  the  colonies  would  stand  it  no  longer,  and  it  fell  to  Lord 
Palmerston  to  find  something  to  put  in  its  place ;  and  the 
plan  of  granting  tickets-of-leave  to  convicts  who  had  shown 
that  they  were  capable  of  regeneration  was  the  outcome  of 
the  necessity  and  of  his  administration.  The  measures  to 
abate  the  smoke  nuisance  by  compelling  factories,  under  pen- 


WHERE  WAS   LORD  PALMERSTON  ?  463 

allies,  to  consume  their  own  smoke,  is  also  the  offering  of 
Palmerston's  activity  in  the  Home  Office.  The  Factory 
Acts  were  extended  by  him.  He  went  energetically  to 
work  in  the  shutting  up  of  graveyards  in  the  metropolis; 
and  in  a  letter  to  his  brother  he  declared  that  he  should  like 
to  "put  down  beer-shops,  and  let  shopkeepers  sell  beer  like 
oil,  and  vinegar,  and  treacle,  to  be  carried  home  and  drunk 
with  wives  and  children." 

This  little  project  is  worthy  of  notice,  because  it  illus- 
trates, more  fairly  perhaps  than  some  far  greater  plan  might 
do,  at  once  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  Palmerston's 
intelligence.  He  could  not  see  why  everything  should  not 
be  done  in  a  plain  straightforward  way,  and  why  the  ar- 
rangements that  were  good  for  the  sale  of  one  thing  might 
not  be  good  also  for  the  sale  of  another.  He  did  not  stop 
to  inquire  whether,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  beer  is  a  commodity 
at  all  like  oil,  and  vinegar,  and  treacle ;  whether  the  same 
consequences  follow  the  drinking  of  beer  and  the  consump- 
tion of  treacle.  His  critics  said  that  he  was  apt  to  manage 
his  foreign  affairs  on  the  same  rough-and-ready  principle. 
If  a  system  suited  England,  why  should  it  not  suit  all  other 
places  as  well?  If  treacle  may  be  sold  safely  without  any 
manner  of  authoritative  regulation,  why  not  beer?  The 
answer  to  the  latter  question  is  plain  —  because  treacle  is 
not  beer.  So,  people  said,  with  Palmerston's  constitutional 
projects  for  every  place.  Why  should  not  that  which  suits 
England  suit  also  Spain  ?  Because,  to  begin  with,  a  good 
many  people  urged,  Spain  is  not  England. 

There  was  one  department  of  his  duties  in  which  Palmer- 
ston  was  acquiring  a  new  and  a  somewhat  odd  reputation. 
That  was  in  his  way  of  answering  deputations  and  letters. 
"The  mere  routine  business  of  the  Home  Office,"  Palmer- 
ston  writes  to  his  brother, "  as  far  as  that  consists  in  daily 
correspondence,  is  far  lighter  than  that  of  the  Foreign  Of- 
fice. But  during  a  session  of  Parliament  the  whole  time  of 
the  Secretary  of  State,  up  to  the  time  when  he  must  go  to 
the  House  of  Commons,  is  taken  up  by  the  deputations  of 
all  kinds,  and  interviews  with  members  of  Parliament,  mili- 
tia colonels,  etc."  Lord  Palmerston  was  always  civil  and 
cordial ;  he  Avas  full  of  a  peculiar  kind  of  fresh  common- 
sense,  and  always  ready  to  apply  it  to  any  subject  what- 


464:  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWIST  TIMES. 

ever.  lie  could  at  any  time  say  some  racy  thing  which 
set  the  public  wondering  and  laughing.  He  gave  some- 
thing like  a  shock  to  the  Presbytery  of  Edinburgh  when 
they  wrote  to  him,  through  the  moderator,  to  ask  whether 
a  national  fast  ought  not  to  be  appointed  in  consequence 
of  the  appearance  of  cholera.  Lord  Palmerston  gravely 
admonished  the  Presbytery  that  the  Maker  of  the  universe 
had  appointed  certain  laws  of  nature  for  the  planet  on 
which  we  live,  and  that  the  weal  or  woe  of  mankind  de- 
pends on  the  observance  of  those  laws — one  of  them  con- 
necting health  "with  the  absence  of  those  noxious  exhala- 
tions which  proceed  from  overcrowded  human  beings,  or 
from  decomposing  substances,  whether  animal  or  vegeta- 
ble." He  therefore  recommended  that  the  purification  of 
towns  and  cities  should  be  more  strenuously  carried  on,  and 
remarked  that  the  causes  and  sources  of  contagion,  if  allow- 
ed to  remain, "  will  infallibly  breed  pestilence  and  be  fruit- 
ful in  death,  in  spite  of  all  the  prayers  and  fastings  of  a 
united  but  inactive  nation."  When  Lord  Stanley  of  Alder- 
ley  applied  to  Lord  Palmerston  for  a  special  permission  for 
a  deceased  dignitary  of  a  church  to  be  buried  under  the 
roof  of  the  sacred  building,  the  Home  Secretary  declined  to 
accede  to  the  request  in  a  letter  that  might  have  come  from, 
or  might  have  delighted,  Sydney  Smith.  "What  special 
connection  is  there  between  church  dignities  and  the  privi- 
lege of  being  decomposed  under  the  feet  of  survivors?  Do 
you  seriously  mean  to  imply  that  a  soul  is  more  likely  to 
go  to  heaven  because  the  body  which  it  inhabited  lies  de- 
composing under  the  pavement  of  a  church  instead  of  being 
placed  in  a  church-yard  ?  .  .  .  England  is,  I  believe,  the 
only  country  in  which,  in  these  days,  people  accumulate  pu- 
trefying dead  bodies  amidst  the  dwellings  of  the  living;  and 
as  to  burying  bodies  under  thronged  churches,  you  might 
as  well  put  them  under  libraries,  drawing-rooms,  and  dining- 
rooms." 

Lord  Palmerston  did  not  see  what  a  very  large  field  of 
religious  and  philosophical  controversy  he  opened  np  by 
some  of  his  arguments,  both  as  to  the  fasting  and  as  to  the 
burial  in  church-yards.  He  only  saw,  for  the  moment,  what 
appeared  to  him  the  healthy  common-sense  aspect  of  the  po- 
sition he  had  taken  up,  and  did  not  think  or  care  about  what 


WHERE   WAS  LORD   PALMERSTON  ?  465 

• 

other  positions  he  might  be  surrendering  by  the  very  act. 
He  had  not  a  poetic  or  philosophic  mind.  In  clearing  his 
intelligence  from  all  that  he  would  have  called  prejudice 
or  superstition,  he  had  cleared  out  also  much  of  the  deeper 
sympathetic  faculty  which  enables  one  man  to  understand 
the  feelings  and  get  at  the  springs  of  conduct  in  the  breasts 
of  other  men.  No  one  can  doubt  that  his  jaunty  way  of 
treating  grave  and  disputed  subjects  oifended  many  pure 
and  simple  minds.  Yet  it  was  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
mere  levity  dictated  his  way  of  dealing  with  the  prejudices 
of  others.  He  had  often  given  the  question  his  deepest  at- 
tention, and  come  to  a  conclusion  with  as  much  thought  as 
his  temperament  would  have  allowed  to  any  subject.  The 
difference  between  him  and  graver  men  was  that  when  he 
had  come  to  a  conclusion  seriously,  he  loved  to  express  his 
views  humorously.  He  resembled  in  this  respect  some  of 
the  greatest  and  the  most  earnest  men  of  his  time.  Count 
Cavotir  delighted  in  jocose  and  humorous  answers;  so  did 
President  Lincoln  ;  so  at  one  period  of  his  public  career  did 
Prince  Bismarck.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Palmer- 
ston  often  made  enemies  by  his  seeming  levity,  when  another 
man  could  easily  have  made  friends  by  saying  just  the  same 
thing  in  grave  words.  The  majority  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons liked  him  because  he  amused  them  and  made  them 
laugh  ;  and  they  thought  no  more  of  the  matter. 

But  the  Avar  is  now  fairly  launched ;  and  Palmerston  is 
to  all  appearance  what  would  be  vulgarly  called  "out  of  the 
swim."  Every  eye  was  turned  to  him.  He  was  like  Pitt 
standing  up  on  one  of  the  back  benches  to  support  the  ad- 
ministration of  Addington.  For  years  he  had  been  identified 
with  the  Foreign  Office,  and  with  that  sort  of  foreign  policy 
which  would  seem  best  suited  to  the  atmosphere  of  war; 
and  now  war  is  on  foot,  and  Palmerston  is  in  the  Home  Of- 
fice pleasantly  "  chaffing  "  militia  colonels,  and  making  sensi- 
tive theologians  angry  by  the  flippancy  of  his  replies.  Per- 
haps there  was  something  flattering  to  Palmerston's  feeling 
of  self-love  in  the  curious  wonder  with  which  people  turned 
their  eyes  upon  him  during  all  that  interval.  Every  one 
seemed  to  ask  how  the  country  was  to  get  on  without  him 
to  manage  its  foreign  affairs,  and  when  he  would  be  good 
enough  to  come  down  from  his  quiet  seat  in  the  Home  Qf- 

20* 


466  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

• 

fice  and  assume  what  seemed  his  natural  duties.  A  famous 
tenor  singer  of  our  day  once  had  some  quarrel  with  his  man- 
ager. The  singer  withdrew  from  the  company ;  some  one 
else  had  to  be  put  in  his  place.  On  the  first  night,  when  the 
new  man  made  his  appearance  before  the  public,  the  great 
singer  was  seen  in  a  box  calmly  watching  the  performance 
like  any  other  of  the  audience.  The  new  man  turned  out  a 
failure.  The  eyes  of  the  house  began  to  fix  themselves  upon 
the  one  who  could  sing,  but  who  was  sitting  as  unconcern- 
edly in  his  box  as  if  he  never  meant  to  sing  any  more.  The 
audience  at  first  were  incredulous.  It  was  in  a  great  pro- 
vincial city  where  the  singer  had  always  been  a  prime  favor- 
ite. They  could  not  believe  that  they  were  in  good  faith  to 
be  expected  to  put  up  with  bad  singing  while  he  was  there. 
At  last  their  patience  gave  way.  They  insisted  on  the  one 
singer  leaving  his  place  on  the  stage,  and  the  other  coming 
down  from  his  box  and  his  easy  attitude  of  unconcern,  and 
resuming  what  they  regarded  as  his  proper  part.  They 
would  have  their  way ;  they  carried  their  point ;  and  the 
man  who  could  sing  was  compelled  at  last  to  return  to  the 
scene  of  his  old  triumphs  and  sing  for  them  again.  The  at- 
titude of  Lord  Palmerston,  and  the  manner  in  which  the 
public  eyes  were  turned  upon  him  during  the  early  days  of 
the  war,  could  hardly  be  illustrated  more  effectively  than 
by  this  story.  As  yet  the  only  wonder  was  why  he  did  not 
take  somehow  the  directorship  of  affairs;  the  time  was  to 
come  when  the  general  voice  would  insist  upon  his  doing  so. 
One  day  a  startling  report  ran  through  all  circles.  It  was 
given  out  that  Palmerston  had  actually  resigned.  So  far  was 
he  from  any  intention  of  taking  on  himself  the  direction  of 
affairs — even  of  war  or  of  foreign  affairs — that  he  appeared 
to  have  gone  out  of  the  ministry  altogether.  The  report 
was  confirmed:  Palmerstou  actually  had  resigned.  It  was 
at  once  asserted  that  his  resignation  was  caused  by  differ- 
ence of  opinion  between  him  and  his  colleagues  on  the  East- 
ern policy  of  the  Government.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
was  as  stoutly  affirmed  that  the  difference  of  opinion  had 
only  to  C}Q  with  the  new  Reform  Bill  which  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell was  preparing  to  introduce.  Now  it  is  certain  that  Lord 
Palmerston  did  differ  in  opinion  with  L.or4  John  Russell  on 
the  subject  of  hjs  Reform  Bil].  It  is  certain  that  this  was 


WHERE   WAS   LORD   PALMERSTON  ?  467 

the  avowed  cause,  and  the  only  avowed  cause,  of  Pal mer- 
ston's  resignation.  But  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  real 
cause  of  the  resignation  was  the  conviction  in  Palmerston's 
mind  that  his  colleagues  were  not  up  to  the  demands  of  the 
crisis  in  regard  to  the  Eastern  war.  Lord  Palmerston's  let- 
ters to  his  brother  on  the  subject  are  amusing.  They  re- 
semble some  of  the  epistles  which  used  to  pass  between  sus- 
pected lovers  in  old  days,  and  in  which  the  words  were  so 
arranged  that  the  sentences  conveyed  an  obvious  meaning 
good  enough  for  the  eye  of  jealous  authority,  but  had  a  very 
different  tale  to  tell  to  the  one  being  for  whom  the  truth  was 
intended.  Lord  Palmerston  gives  his  brother  a  long  and 
circumstantial  account  of  the  differences  about  the  Reform 
Bill,  and  about  the  impossibility  of  a  Home  Secretary  either 
supporting  by  speech  a  Bill  he  did  not  like,  or  sitting  silent 
during  the  whole  discussion  on  it  in  the  House  of  Commons. 
He  shows  that  he  could  not  possibly  do  otherwise  under  such 
trying  circumstances  than  resign.  The  whole  letter,  until 
we  come  to  the  very  last  paragraph,  is  about  the  Reform 
Bill,  and  nothing  else.  One  might  suppose  that  nothing  else 
whatever  was  entering  into  the  writer's  thoughts.  But  at 
the  end  Palmerston  just  remembers  to  add  that  the  Times 
was  telling  "an  untruth"  when  it  said  there  had  been  no  dif- 
ference in  the  cabinet  about  Eastern  affairs;  for, in  fact,  there 
had  been  some  little  lack  of  agreement  on  the  subject,  but  it 
would  have  looked  rather  silly,  Palmerston  thinks,  if  he  were 
to  have  gone  out  of  office  merely  because  he  could  not  have 
his  own  way  about  Turkish  affairs.  Exactly;  and  in  a  few 
days  after  Palmerston  was  induced  to  withdraw  his  resigna- 
tion, and  to  remain  in  the  Government ;  and  then  he  wrote 
to  his  brother  again  explaining  how  and  all  about  it.  He 
explains  that  several  members  of  the  cabinet  told  him  they 
considered  the  details  of  the  Reform  Bill  quite  open  to  dis- 
cussion, and  so  forth.  "Their  earnest  representations,  and 
the  knowledge  that  the  cabinet  had  on  Thursday  taken  a 
decision  on  Turkish  affairs  in  entire  accordance  with  opinions 
which  I  had  long  unsuccessfully  pressed  upon  them,  decided 
me  to  withdraw  my  resignation,  which  I  did  yesterday." 
"  Of  course,"  Lord  Palmerston  quietly  adds, "  what  I  say  to 
you  about  the  cabinet  decision  on  Turkish  affairs  is  entirely 
for  yourself,  and  not  to  be  mentioned  to  anybody;  but  it  is 


468  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

very  important,  and  will  give  the  allied  squadrons  the  com- 
mand of  the  Black  Sea."  All  this  was  very  prudent,  of 
course,  and  very  prettily  arranged.  But  we  doubt  whether 
a  single  man  in  England  who  cared  anything  about  the  whole 
question  was  imposed  upon  for  one  moment.  Nobody  be- 
lieved that  at  such  a  time  Lord  Palmerston  would  have  gone 
out  of  office  because  he  did  not  quite  like  the  details  of  a 
Reform  Bill,  or  that  the  cabinet  would  have  obstinately 
clung  to  such  a  scheme  just  then  in  spite  of  his  opposition. 
Indeed,  the  first  impression  of  every  one  was  that  Palmerston 
had  gone  out  only  in  order  to  come  back  again  much  strong- 
er than  before ;  that  he  resigned  when  he  could  not  have 
his  way  in  Eastern  aifairs;  and  that  he  would  resume  office 
empowered  to  have  his  way  in  everything.  The  explana- 
tions about  the  Reform  Bill  found  as  impatient  listeners 
among  the  public  at  large  as  the  desperate  attempts  of  the 
young  heroine  in  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer  "to  satisfy  hon- 
est Tony  Lumpkin  with  her  hasty  and  ill-concocted  devices 
about  Shakebag  and  Green  and  the  rest  of  them,  whose  story 
she  pretends  to  read  for  him  from  the  letter  which  is  not  in- 
tended to  reach  the  suspicious  ears  of  his  mother.  When 
Lord  Palmerston  resumed  his  place  in  the  ministry,  the  pub- 
lic at  large  felt  certain  that  the  war  spirit  was  now  at  last 
to  have  its  way,  and  that  the  dallyings  of  the  peace-lovers 
were  over. 

Nor  was  England  long  left  to  guess  at  the  reason  why 
Lord  Palmerston  had  so  suddenly  resigned  his  office,  and  so 
suddenly  returned  to  it.  A  great  disaster  had  fallen  upon 
Turkey.  Her  fleet  had  been  destroyed  by  the  Russians  at 
Sinope,  in  the  Black  Sea.  Sinope  is,  or  was,  a  considerable 
seaport  town  and  naval  station  belonging  to  Turkey,  and 
standing  on  a  rocky  promontory  on  the  southern  shore  of 
the  Black  Sea.  On  November  30th,  1853,  the  Turkish  squad- 
ron was  lying  there  at  anchor.  The  squadron  consisted  of 
seven  frigates,  a  sloop,  and  a  steamer.  It  had  no  ship  of  the 
line.  The  Russian  fleet,  consisting  of  six  ships  of  the  line 
and  some  steamers,  had  been  cruising  about  the  Black  Sea 
for  several  days  previously,  issuing  from  Sebastopol,  and 
making  an  occasional  swoop  now  and  then  as  if  to  bear  down 
npon  the  Turkish  squadron.  The  Turkish  commander  was 
quite  aware  of  the  danger, and  pressed  for  re-enforcements; 


WHERE   WAS   LORD   PALMERSTON  ?  469 

but  nothing  was  done,  either  by  the  Turkish  Government  or 
by  the  ambassadors  of  the  allies  at  Constantinople.  On  No- 
vember 30th,  however,  the  Sebastopol  fleet  did  actually  bear 
down  upon  the  Turkish  vessels  lying  at  Sinope.  The  Turks, 
seeing  that  an  attack  was  coming  at  last,  not  only  accepted 
but  even  anticipated  it;  for  they  were  the  first  to  fire.  The 
fight  was  hopeless  for  them.  They  fought  with  all  the  des- 
perate energy  of  fearless  and  unconquerable  men ;  uncon- 
querable, at  least,  in  the  sense  that  they  would  not  yield. 
But  the  odds  were  too  much  against  them  to  give  them  any 
chance.  Either  they  would  not  haul  down  their  flag,  which 
is  very  likely,  or  if  they  did  strike  their  colors  the  Russian 
admiral  did  not  see  the  signal.  The  fight  went  on  until  the 

o  o 

whole  Turkish  squadron,  save  for  the  steamer,  was  destroyed. 
It  was  asserted  on  official  authority  that  moro  than  four 
thousand  Turks  were  killed  ;  that  the  survivors  hardly  num- 
bered four  hundred;  and  that  of  these  every  man  was 
wounded.  Sinope  itself  was  ranch  shattered  and  battered 
by  the  Russian  fleet.  The  affair  was  at  once  the  destruction 
of  the  Turkish  ships  and  an  attack  upon  Turkish  territory. 

This  was  "  the  massacre  of  Sinope."  When  the  news 
came  to  England  there  arose  one  cry  of  grief  and  anger  and 
shame.  It  was  regarded  as  a  deliberate  act  of  treachery, 
consummated  amidst  conditions  of  the  most  hideous  barbar- 
ity. A  clamor  arose  against  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  as  if  he 
were  a  monster  outside  the  pale  of  civilized  law,  like  some 
of  the  furious  and  treacherous  despots  of  medieval  Asiatic 
history.  Mr.  Kinglake  has  shown — and,  indeed,  the  sequence 
of  events  must  in  time  have  shown  every  one — that  there 
was  no  foundation  for  these  accusations.  The  attack  was 
not  treacherous,  but  openly  made;  not  sudden,  but  clearly 
announced  by  previous  acts,  and  long  expected,  as  we  have 
seen,  by  the  Turkish  commander  himself;  and  it  was  not  in 
breach  even  of  the  courtesies  of  war.  Russia  and  Turkey 
were  not  only  formally  but  actually  at  war.  The  Turks 
were  the  first  to  begin  the  actual  military  operations.  More 
than  five  weeks  before  the  affair  at  Sinope  they  had  opened 
the  business  by  firing  from  a  fortress  on  a  Russian  flotilla ; 
a  few  days  after  this  act  they  crossed  the  Danube  at  Wid- 
din,  and  occupied  Kalafat;  and  for  several  days  they  had 
fought  under  Omar  Pasha  with  brilliant  success  acraiust  the 


470  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Russians  at  Oltenitza.  All  England  had  been  enthusiastic 
about  the  bravery  which  the  Turks  had  shown  at  Oltenitza, 
and  the  success  which  had  attended  their  first  encounter 
with  the  enemy.  It  was  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the 
Emperor  of  Russia  would  only  fight  where  he  was  at  a  dis- 
advantage, and  refrain  from  attack  where  his  power  was 
overwhelming.  Still,  there  was  an  impression  among  Eng- 
lish and  French  statesmen  that  while  negotiations  for  peace 
were  actually  going  on  between  the  Western  Powers  and 
Russia,  and  while  the  fleets  of  England  and  France  were 
remaining  peacefully  at  anchor  in  the  Bosphorus,  whither 
they  had  been  summoned  by  this  time,  the  Russian  Emperor 
would  abstain  from  complicating  matters  by  making  use  of 
his  Sebastopol  fleet.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  unwise 
than  to  act  upon  an  impression  of  this  kind  as  if  it  were  a 
regular  agreement.  But  the  English  public  did  not  under- 
stand at  that  moment  the  actual  condition  of  things,  and 
may  well  have  supposed  that  if  our  Government  seemed  se- 
cure and  content,  there  must  have  been  some  definite  ar- 
rangement to  create  so  happy  a  condition  of  mind.  It  may 
look  strange  to  readers  now,  surveying  this  chapter  of  past 
history  with  cool,  unimpassioned  mind,  that  anybody  could 
have  believed  in  the  existence  of  any  arrangement  by  virtue 
of  which  Turkey  could  be  at  war  with  Russia  and  not  at 
war  with  her  at  the  same  time ;  which  would  have  allowed 
Turkey  to  strike  her  enemy  when  and  how  she  pleased,  and 
would  have  restricted  the  enemy  to  such  time,  place,  and 
method  of  retort  as  might  suit  the  convenience  of  the  neu- 
tral Powers.  But  at  the  time,  when  the  true  state  of  affairs 
was  little  known  in  England,  the  account  of  the  "  massacre 
of  Sinope  "  was  received  as  if  it  had  been  the  tale  of  some 
unparalleled  act  of  treachery  and  savagery ;  and  the  eager- 
ness of  the  country  for  war  against  Russia  became  inflamed 
to  actual  passion. 

It  was  at  that  moment  that  Palmerston  resigned  his  office. 
The  cabinet  were  still  not  prepared  to  go  as  far  as  he  would 
have  gone.  They  had  believed  that  the  Sebastopol  fleet 
would  do  nothing  as  long  as  the  Western  Powers  kept  talk- 
ing about  peace ;  they  now  believed,  perhaps,  that  the  Em- 
peror of  Russia  would  say  he  was  very  sorry  for  what  had 
been  done,  and  promise  not  to  do  so  any  more.  Lord  Palm- 


WHERE   WAS   LORD   PALMERSTON  ?  471 

erston,  supported  by  the  urgent  pressure  of  the  Emperor  of 
the  French,  succeeded,  however,  in  at  last  overcoming  their 
determination.  It  was  agreed  that  some  decisive  announce- 
ment should  be  made  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia  on  the  part 
of  England  and  France ;  and  Lord  Palmerston  resumed  his 
place,  master  of  the  situation.  This  was  the  decision  of 
which  he  had  spoken  in  his  letter  to  his  brother;  the  deci- 
sion which  he  said  he  had  long  unsuccessfully  pressed  upon 
his  colleagues,  and  which  would  give  the  allied  squadrons 
the  command  of  the  Black  Sea.  It  was,  in  fact,  an  intima- 
tion to  Russia  that  France  and  England  were  resolved  to 
prevent  any  repetition  of  the  Sinope  affair;  that  their  squad- 
rons would  enter  the  Black  Sea  with  orders  to  request,  and, 
if  necessary,  to  constrain,  every  Russian  ship  met  in  the 
Euxine  to  return  to  Sebastopol ;  and  to  repel  by  force  any 
act  of  aggression  afterward  attempted  against  the  Ottoman 
territory  or  flag.  This  was  not,  it  should  be  observed,  sim- 
ply an  intimation  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia  that  the  Great 
Powers  would  impose  and  enforce  the  neutrality  of  the 
Black  Sea.  It  was  an  announcement  that  if  the  flag  of 
Russia  dared  to  show  itself  on  that  sea,  which  washed 
Russia's  southern  shores,  the  war- ships  of  two  far  foreign 
States,  taking  possession  of  those  waters,  would  pull  it  down, 
or  compel  those  who  bore  it  to  fly  ignominiously  into  port. 
This  was  in  fact  war. 

Of  course  Lord  Palmerston  knew  this.  Because  it  meant 
war,  he  accepted  it  and  returned  to  his  place,  well  pleased 
with  the  way  in  which  things  were  going.  From  his  point 
of  view  he  was  perfectly  right.  He  had  been  consistent  all 
through.  He  believed  from  the  first  that  the  pretensions 
of  Russia  would  have  to  be  put  down  by  force  of  arms,  and 
could  not  be  put  down  in  any  other  way ;  he  believed  that 
the  danger  to  England  from  the  aggrandizement  of  Russia 
was  a  capital  danger  calling  for  any  extent  of  national  sac- 
rifice to  avert  it.  He  believed  that  a  war  with  Russia  was 
inevitable,  and  he  preferred  taking  it  sooner  to  taking  it 
later.  He  believed  that  an  alliance  with  the  Emperor  of 
the  French  was  desirable,  and  a  war  with  Russia  would  be 
the  best  means  of  making  this  effective.  Lord  Palmerston, 
therefore,  was  determined  not  to  remain  in  the  cabinet  un- 
less some  strenuous  measures  were  taken,  and  now,  as  on  a 


472  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

memorable  former  occasion,  he  understood  better  than  any 
one  else  the  prevailing  temper  of  the  English  people. 

When  the  resolution  of  the  Western  cabinets  was  com- 
municated to  the  Emperor  of  Russia  he  withdrew  his  repre- 
sentatives from  London  and  Paris.  On  February  21st,  1854, 
the  diplomatic  relations  between  Russia  and  the  two  allied 
Powers  were  brought  to  a  stop.  Six  weeks  before  this  the 
English  and  French  fleets  had  entered  the  Black  Sea,  The 
interval  was  filled  up  with  renewed  efforts  to  bring  about 
a  peaceful  arrangement,  which  were  conducted  with  as 
much  gravity  as  if  any  one  believed  in  the  possibility  of 
their  success.  The  Emperor  of  the  French,  who  always 
loved  letter- writing,  and  delighted  in  what  Cobden  once 
happily  called  the  "  monumental  style,"  wrote  to  the  Russian 
Emperor  appealing  to  him,  professedly  in  the  interests  of 
peace,  to  allow  an  armistice  to  be  signed,  to  let  the  belliger- 
ent forces  on  both  sides  retire  from  the  places  to  which  mo- 
tives of  war  had  led  them,  and  then  to  negotiate  a  conven- 
tion with  the  Sultan  which  might  be  submitted  to  a  con- 
ference of  the  four  Powers.  If  Russia  would  not  do  this, 
then  Louis  Napoleon,  undertaking  to  speak  in  the  name  of 
the  Queen  of  Great  Britain  as  well  as  of  himself,  intimated 
that  France  and  England  would  be  compelled  to  leave  to 
the  chances  of  war  what  might  now  be  decided  by  reason 
and  justice.  The  Emperor  Nicholas  replied  that  he  had 
claimed  nothing  but  what  was  confirmed  by  treaties;  that 
his  conditions  were  perfectly  well  known ;  that  he  was  still 
willing  to  treat  on  these  conditions;  but  if  Russia  were 
driven  to  arms,  then  he  quietly  observed  that  he  had  no 
doubt  she  could  hold  her  own  as  well  in  1854  as  she  had 
done  in  1812.  That  year,  1812,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to 
say,  was  the  year  of  the  burning  of  Moscow  and  the  dis- 
astrous retreat  of  the  French.  We  can  easily  understand 
what  faith  in  the  possibility  of  a  peaceful  arrangement  the 
Russian  Emperor  must  have  had  when  he  made  the  allusion, 
and  the  French  Emperor  must  have  had  when  it  met  his 
eye.  Of  course  if  Louis  Napoleon  had  had  the  faintest  be- 
lief in  any  good  result  to  come  of  his  letter,  he  would  never 
have  closed  it  with  the  threat  which  provoked  the  Russian 
sovereign  into  his  insufferable  rejoinder.  The  correspond- 
ence micrht  remind  one  of  that  which  is  said  to  have  passed 


WHERE  WAS  LORD   PALMERSTON?  473 

between  two  Irish  chieftains.  "Pay  me  ray  tribute,"  wrote 
the  one,  " or  else!"  "I  owe  you  no  tribute,"  replied  the 
other, "  and  if—" 

England's  ultimatum  to  Russia  was  despatched  on  Feb- 
ruary 27th,  1854.  It  was  conveyed  in  a  letter  from  Lord 
Clarendon  to  Count  Nesselrode.  It  declared  that  the  Brit- 
ish Government  had  exhausted  all  the  efforts  of  negotiation, 
and  was  compelled  to  announce  that  "if  Russia  should  de- 
cline to  restrict  within  purely  diplomatic  limits  the  discus- 
sion in  which  she  has  for  some  time  past  been  engaged  with 
the  Sublime  Porte,  and  does  not,  by  return  of  the  messenger 
who  is  the  bearer  of  my  present  letter,  announce  her  inten- 
tion of  causing  the  Russian  troops  under  Prince  GortschakofF 
to  commence  their  march  with  a  view  to  recross  the  Pruth, 
so  that  the  provinces  of  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  shall  be 
completely  evacuated  on  April  30th  next,  the  British  Gov- 
ernment must  consider  the  refusal  or  the  silence  of  the  cabi- 
net of  St.  Petersburg  as  equivalent  to  a  declaration  of  war, 
and  will  take  its  measures  accordingly."  It  is  not,  perhaps, 
very  profitable  work  for  the  historian  to  criticise  the  mere 
terms  of  a  document  announcing  a  course  of  action  which 
long  before  its  issue  had  become  inevitable.  But  it  is  worth 
while  remarking,  perhaps,  that  it  would  have  been  better 
and  more  dignified  to  confine  the  letter  to  the  simple  demand 
for  the  evacuation  of  the  Danubian  provinces.  To  ask  Rus- 
sia to  promise  that  her  controversy  with  the  Porte  should 
be  thenceforward  restricted  within  purely  diplomatic  limits 
was  to  make  a  demand  with  which  no  Great  Power  would, 
or  indeed  could,  undertake  to  comply.  A  member  of  the 
Peace  Society  itself  might  well  hesitate  to  give  a  promise 
that  a  dispute  in  which  he  was  engaged  should  be  forever 
confined  within  purely  diplomatic  limits.  In  any  case,  it  was 
certain  that  Russia  would  not  now  make  any  concessions 
tending  toward  peace.  The  messenger  who  was  the  bearer 
of  the  letter  was  ordered  not  to  wait  more  than  six  days  for 
an  answer.  On  the  fifth  day  the  messenger  was  informed 
by  word  of  mouth  from  Count  Nesselrode  that  the  Emperor 
did  not  think  it  becoming  in  him  to  give  any  reply  to  the 
letter.  The  die  was  cast.  Rather,  truly,  the  fact  was  re- 
corded that  the  die  had  been  cast.  A  few  days  after  a 
crowd  assembled  in  front  of  the  Royal  Exchange  to  watch 


474:  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

the  performance  of  a  ceremonial  that  had  been  little  known 
to  the  living  generation.  The  Sergeant-at-arms,  accompa- 
nied by  some  of  the  officials  of  the  City,  read  from  the  steps 
of  the  Royal  Exchange  her  Majesty's  declaration  of  war 
against  Russia. 

The  causes  of  the  declaration  of  war  were  set  forth  in  an 
official  statement  published  in  the  London  Gazette.  This 
document  is  an  interesting  and  a  valuable  State-paper.  It 
recites  with  clearness  and  deliberation  the  successive  steps 
by  which  the  allied  Powers  had  been  led  to  the  necessity 
of  an  armed  intervention  in  the  controversy  between  Turkey 
and  Russia.  It  described,  in  the  first  place,  the  complaint 
of  the  Emperor  of  Russia  against  the  Sultan  with  reference 
to  the  claims  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  Churches,  and  the  ar- 
rangement promoted  satisfactorily  by  her  Majesty's  ambas- 
sador at  Constantinople  for  rendering  justice  to  the  claim, 
"an  arrangement  to  which  no  exception  was  taken  by  the 
Russian  Government."  Then  came  the  sudden  unmasking 
of  the  other  and  quite  different  claims  of  Prince  Mentschi- 
koff,  "the  nature  of  which,  in  the  first  instance,  he  endeavor- 
ed, as  far  as  possible,  to  conceal  from  her  Majesty's  ambas- 
sador." These  claims,  "  thus  studiously  concealed,"  affected 
not  merely,  or  at  all,  the  privileges  of  the  Greek  Church  at 
Jerusalem,  "  but  the  position  of  many  millions  of  Turkish 
subjects  in  their  relations  to  their  sovereign  the  Sultan." 
The  declaration  recalled  the  various  attempts  that  were 
made  by  the  Queen's  Government  in  conjunction  with  the 
Governments  of  France,  Austria,  and  Prussia,  to  meet  any 
just  demands  of  the  Russian  Emperor  without  affecting  the 
dignity  and  independence  of  the  Sultan;  and  showed  that 
if  the  object  of  Russia  had  been  solely  to  secure  their  proper 
privileges  and  immunities  for  the  Christian  populations  of 
the  Ottoman  empire,  the  offers  that  were  made  could  not 
have  failed  to  meet  that  object.  Her  Majesty's  Govern- 
ment, therefore,  held  it  as  manifest  that  what  Russia  was 
really  seeking  was  not  the  happiness  of  the  Christian  com- 
munities of  Turkey,  but  the  right  to  interfere  in  the  ordina- 
ry relations  between  Turkish  subjects  and  their  sovereign. 
The  Sultan  refused  to  consent  to  this,  and  declared  war  in 
self-defence.  Yet  the  Government  of  her  Majesty  did  not 
renounce  all  hope  of  restoring  peace  between  the  contending 


WHERE  WAS  LORD  PALMERSTON?  475 

parties  until  advice  and  remonstrance  proving  wholly  in 
vain,  and  Russia  continuing  to  extend  her  military  prepara- 
tions, her  Majesty  felt  called  upon, "  by  regard  for  an  ally 
the  integrity  and  independence  of  whose  empire  have  been 
recognized  as  essential  to  the  peace  of  Europe;  by  the  sym- 
pathies of  her  people  with  right  against  wrong;  by  a  desire 
to  avert  from  her  dominions  most  injurious  consequences, 
and  to  save  Europe  from  the  preponderance  of  a  Power 
which  has  violated  the  faith  of  treaties  and  defies  the  opin- 
ion of  the  civilized  world,  to  take  up  arms,  in  conjunction 
with  the  Emperor  of  the  French,  for  the  defence  of  the 
Sultan." 

Some  passages  of  this  declaration  have  invited  criticism 
from  English  historians.  It  opens,  for  example,  with  a 
statement  of  the  fact  that  the  efforts  for  an  arrangement 
were  made  by  her  Majesty  in  conjunction  with  France, 
Austria,  and  Prussia.  It  speaks  of  this  concert  of  the  four 
Powers  down  almost  to  the  very  close;  and  then  it  sudden- 
ly breaks  off,  and  announces  that  in  consequence  of  all  that 
has  happened  her  Majesty  has  felt  compelled  to  take  up 
arms  "in  conjunction  with  the  Emperor  of  the  French." 
What  strange  diplomatic  mismanagement,  it  was  asked,  has 
led  to  this  singular  non  sequitur?  Why,  after  having  car- 
ried on  the  negotiations  through  all  their  various  stages  with 
three  other  Great  Powers,  all  of  them  supposed  to  be  equal- 
ly interested  in  a  settlement  of  the  question,  is  England  at 
the  last  moment  compelled  to  take  up  arms  with  only  one 
of  those  Powers  as  an  ally  ? 

The  principal  reason  for  the  separation  of  the  two  West- 
ern Powers  of  Europe  from  the  other  great  States  was 
found  in  the  condition  of  Prussia.  Prussia  was  then  great- 
ly under  the  influence  of  the  Russian  court.  The  Prussian 
sovereign  was  related  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  and  his 
kingdom  was  almost  overshadowed  by  Russian  influence. 
Prussia  had  come  to  occupy  a  lower  position  in  Europe 
than  she  had  ever  before  held  during  her  existence  as  a 
kingdom.  It  seemed  almost  marvellous  how  by  any  proc- 
ess the  country  of  the  Great  Frederick  could  have  sunk  to 
such  a  condition  of  insignificance.  She  had  been  compelled 
to  stoop  to  Austria  after  the  events  of  1848.  The  King  of 
Prussia,  tarn  poring  with  the  offers  of  the  strong  national  par- 


476  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ty  who  desired  to  make  him  Emperor  of  Germany,  now  mov- 
ing forward  and  now  drawing  back, "letting  I  dare  not  wait 
upon  I  would,"  was  suddenly  pulled  up  by  Austria.  The 
famous  arrangement  called  afterward  "the  humiliation  of 
Olmiitz,"  and  so  completely  revenged  at  Sadowa,  compelled 
him  to  drop  all  his  triflings  with  nationalism  and  repudiate 
his  former  instigators.  The  King  of  Prussia  was  a  highly- 
cultured,  amiable,  literary  man.  He  loved  letters  and  arts  in 
a  sort  of  dilettante  way;  he  had  good  impulses  and  a  weak 
nature;  he  was  a  dreamer;  a  sort  of  philosopher  manque. 
He  was  unable  to  make  up  his  mind  to  any  momentous  de- 
cision until  the  time  for  rendering  it  effective  had  gone  by. 
A  man  naturally  truthful,  he  was  often  led  by  very  weak- 
ness into  acts  that  seemed  irreconcilable  with  his  previous 
promises  and  engagements.  He  could  say  witty  and  sar- 
castic things,  and  when  political  affairs  went  wrong  with 
him  he  could  console  himself  with  one  or  two  sharp  sayings 
only  heard  of  by  those  immediately  around  him;  and  then 
the  world  might  go  its  way  for  him.  He  was,  like  Rob  Hoy, 
"ower  good  for  banning  and  ower  bad  for  blessing."  Like 
our  own  Charles  II.,  he  never  said  a  foolish  thing  and  never 
did  a  wise  one.  He  ought  to  have  been  an  aesthetic  essay- 
ist, or  a  lecturer  on  art  and  moral  philosophy  to  young 
ladies;  and  an  unkind  destiny  had  made  him  the  king  of  a 
state  specially  embarrassed  in  a  most  troublous  time.  So 
unkindly  was  popular  rumor  as  well  as  fate  to  him,  that  he 
got  the  credit  in  foreign  countries  of  being  a  stupid  sensual- 
ist when  he  was  really  a  man  of  respectable  habits  and  re- 
fined nature;  and  in  England  at  least  the  nickname  "King 
Clicquot"  was  long  the  brand  by  which  the  popular  and 
most  mistaken  impression  of  his  character  was  signified. 

The  King  of  Prussia  was  the  elder  brother  of  the  present 
German  Emperor.  Had  the  latter  been  then  on  the  throne 
he  would  probably  have  taken  some  timely  and  energetic 
decision  with  regard  to  the  national  duty  of  Prussia  during 
the  impending  crisis.  Right  or  wrong,  he  would  doubtless 
have  contrived  to  see  his  way  and  make  up  his  mind  at  an 
early  stage  of  the  European  movement.  It  is  by  no  means 
to  be  assumed  that  he  would  have  taken  the  course  most 
satisfactory  to  England  and  France ;  but  it  is  likely  that 
his  action  might  have  prevented  the  war,  either  by  render- 


WHERE   WAS  LORD   PALMERSTON?  477 

ing  the  allied  Powers  far  too  strong  to  be  resisted  by  Rus- 
sia, or  by  adding  to  Russia  an  influence  which  would  have 
rendered  the  game  of  war  too  formidable  to  suit  the  calcu- 
lations of  the  Emperor  of  the  French.  The  actual  King  of 
Prussia,  however,  went  so  far  with  the  allies  as  to  lead  them 
for  awhile  to  believe  that  he  was  going  all  the  way ;  but  at 
the  last  moment  he  broke  off,  declared  that  the  interests  of 
Prussia  did  not  require  or  allow  him  to  engage  in  a  war, 
and  left  France  and  England  to  walk  their  own  road.  Aus- 
tria could  not  venture  upon  such  a  war  without  the  co-op- 
eration of  Prussia ;  and,  indeed,  the  course  which  the  cam- 
paign took  seemed  likely  to  give  both  Austria  and  Prussia 
a  good  excuse  for  assuming  that  their  interests  were  not 
closely  engaged  in  the  struggle.  Austria  would  most  cer- 
tainly have  gone  to  war  if  the  Emperor  of  Russia  had  kept 
up  the  occupation  of  the  Danubian  Principalities;  and  for 
that  purpose  her  territorial  situation  made  her  irresistible. 
But  when  the  seat  of  war  was  transferred  to  the  Black  Sea, 
and  when  after  awhile  the  Czar  withdrew  his  troops  from 
the  Principalities,  and  Austria  occupied  them  by  virtue  of  a 
convention  with  the  Sultan,  her  direct  interest  in  the  strug- 
gle was  reduced  almost  to  nothing.  Austria  and  Prussia 
were,  in  fact,  solicited  by  both  sides  of  the  dispute,  and  at 
one  time  it  was  even  thought  possible  that  Prussia  might 
give  her  aid  to  Russia.  This,  however,  she  refrained  from 
doing ;  Austria  and  Prussia  made  an  arrangement  between 
themselves  for  mutual  defence  in  case  the  progress  of  the 
war  should  directly  imperil  the  interests  of  either;  and  Eng- 
land and  France  undertook  in  alliance  the  task  of  chastising 
the  presumption  and  restraining  the  ambitious  designs  of 
Russia.  Mr.  Kinglake  finds  much  fault  with  the  policy  of 
the  English  Government,  on  which  he  lays  all  the  blame  of 
the  severance  of  interests  between  the  two  Western  States 
and  the  other  two  Great  Powers.  But  we  confess  that  we 
do  not  see  how  any  course  within  the  reach  of  England 
could  have  secured  just  then  the  thorough  alliance  of  Prus- 
sia ;  and  without  such  an  alliance  it  would  have  been  vain 
to  expect  that  Austria  would  throw  herself  unreservedly 
into  the  policy  of  the  Western  Powers.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  the  controversy  between  Russia  and  the  West 
really  involved  several  distinct  questions,  in  some  of  which 


478  A  HISTOKY  OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

Prussia  had  absolutely  no  direct  interest,  and  Austria  very 
little.  Let  us  set  out  some  of  these  questions  separately. 
There  was  the  Russian  occupation  of  the  Principalities.  In 
this  Austria  frankly  acknowledged  her  capital  interest.  Its 
direct  bearing  was  on  her  more  than  any  other  Power.  It 
concerned  Prussia  as  it  did  England  and  France,  inasmuch 
as  it  was  an  evidence  of  an  aggressive  purpose  which  might 
very  seriously  threaten  the  general  stability  of  the  institu- 
tions of  Europe ;  but  Prussia  had  no  closer  interest  in  it. 
Austria  was  the  State  most  affected  by  it,  and  Austria  was 
the  State  which  could  with  most  effect  operate  against  it, 
and  was  always  willing  and  resolute  if  needs  were  to  do  so. 
Then  there  was  the  question  of  Russia's  claim  to  exercise 
a  protectorate  over  the  Christian  populations  of  Turkey. 
This  concerned  England  and  France  in  one  sense  as  part  of 
the  general  pretensions  of  Russia,  and  concerned  each  of 
them  separately  in  another  sense.  To  France  it  told  of  a 
rivalry  with  the  right  she  claimed  to  look  after  the  interests 
of  the  Latin  Church  ;  to  England  it  spoke  of  a  purpose  to 
obtain  a  hold  over  populations  nominally  subject  to  the 
Sultan  which  might  in  time  make  Russia  virtual  master  of 
the  approaches  to  our  Eastern  possessions.  Austria,  too,  had 
a  direct  interest  in  repelling  these  pretensions  of  Russia,  for 
some  of  the  populations  they  referred  to  were  on  her  very 
frontier.  But  Prussia  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had  any 
direct  national  interest  in  that  question  at  all.  Then  there 
came,  distinct  from  all  these,  the  question  of  the  Straits  of 
the  Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus. 

This  question  of  the  Straits,  which  has  so  much  to  do  with 
the  whole  European  aspect  of  the  war,  is  not  to  be  under- 
stood except  by  those  who  bear  the  conformation  of  the  map 
of  Europe  constantly  in  their  minds.  The  only  outlet  of 
"Russia  on  the  southern  side  is  the  Black  Sea.  The  Black 
Sea  is,  save  for  one  little  outlet  at  its  south-western  extrem- 
ity, a  huge  land-locked  lake.  That  little  outlet  is  the  nar- 
row channel  called  the  Bosphorus.  Russia  and  Turkey,  be- 
tween them,  surround  the  whole  of  the  Black  Sea  with  their 
territory.  Russia  has  the  north  and  some  of  the  eastern 
shore ;  Turkey  has  all  the  southern,  the  Asia  Minor  shore, 
and  nearly  all  the  western  shore.  Close  the  Straits  of  the 
Bosphorus  and  Russia  would  be  literally  locked  into  the 


WHERE   WAS   LORD   PALMERSTON?  479 

Black  Sea.  The  Bosphorus  is  a  narrow  channel,  as  has  been 
said  ;  it  is  some  seventeen  miles  in  length,  and  in  some  places 
it  is  hardly  more  than  half  a  mile  in  breadth.  But  it  is  very 
deep  all  through,  so  that  ships  of  war  can  float  close  up  to 
its  very  shores  on  either  side.  This  channel  in  its  course 
passes  between  the  city  of  Constantinople  and  its  Asiatic 
suburb  of  Scutari.  The  Bosphorus  then  opens  into  the  little 
Sea  of  Marmora ;  and  out  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora  the  way 
westward  is  through  the  channel  of  the  Dardanelles.  The 
Dardanelles  form  the  only  passage  into  the  Archipelago,  and 
thence  into  the  Mediterranean.  The  channel  of  the  Darda- 
nelles is,  like  the  Bosphorus,  very  narrow  and  very  deep, 
but  it  pursues  its  course  for  some  forty  miles.  Any  one  who 
holds  a  map  in  his  hand  will  see  at  once  how  Turkey  and 
Russia  alike  are  affected  by  the  existence  of  the  Straits  on 
either  extremity  of  the  Sea  of  Marmora.  Close  up  these 
Straits  against  vessels  of  war,  and  the  capital  of  the  Sultan 
is  absolutely  unassailable  from  the  sea.  Close  them,  on  the 
other  hand,  and  the  Russian  fleet  in  the  Black  Sea  is  ab- 
solutely cut  off  from  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Western 
world.  But  then  it  has  to  be  remembered  that  the  same 
act  of  closing  would  secure  the  Russian  ports  and  shores  on 
the  Black  Sea  from  the  approach  of  any  of  the  great  navies 
of  the  West.  The  Dardanelles  and  the  Bosphorus  being 
alike  such  narrow  channels,  and  being  edged  alike  by  Turk- 
ish territory,  were  not  regarded  as  high  seas.  The  Sultans 
always  claimed  the  right  to  exclude  foreign  ships  of  war 
from  both  the  Straits.  The  Treaty  of  1841  secured  this 
right  to  Turkey  by  the  agreement  of  the  five  Great  Powers 
of  Europe.  The  treaty  acknowledged  that  the  Porte  had 
the  right  to  shut  the  Straits  against  the  armed  navies  of 
any  foreign  Power;  and  the  Sultan,  for  his  part,  engaged 
not  to  allow  any  such  navy  to  enter  either  of  the  Straits  in 
time  of  peace.  The  closing  of  the  Straits  had  been  the  sub- 
ject of  a  perfect  succession  of  treaties.  The  Treaty  of  1809 
between  Great  Britain  and  Turkey  confirmed  by  engage- 
ment "  the  ancient  rule  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  "  forbidding 
vessels  of  war  at  all  times  to  enter  the  "  Canal  of  Constanti- 
nople." The  Treaty  of  Unkiar-Skelessi  between  Russia  and 
Turkey,  arising  out  of  Russia's  co-operation  with  the  Porte 
to  put  down  the  rebellious  movement  of  Mohammed  Ali,  the 


480  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

Egyptian  vassal  of  the  latter,  contained  a  secret  clause  bind- 
ing the  Porte  to  close  "the  Dardanelles"  against  all  war 

o  o 

vessels  whatever,  thus  shutting  Russia's  enemies  out  of  the 
Black  Sea,  but  leaving  Russia  free  to  pass  the  Bosphorus, 
so  far,  at  least,  as  that  treaty  engagement  was  concerned. 
Later,  when  the  Great  Powers  of  Europe  combined  to  put 
down  the  attempts  of  Egypt,  the  Treaty  of  July  13th,  1841, 
made  in  London,  engaged  that  in  time  of  peace  no  foreign 
ships  of  war  should  be  admitted  into  the  Straits  of  the  Bos- 
phorus and  the  Dardanelles.  This  treaty  was  but  a  renewal 
of  a  convention  made  the  year  before,  while  France  was  still 
sulking  away  from  the  European  concert,  and  did  nothing 
more  than  record  her  return  to  it. 

As  matters  stood  then,  the  Sultan  was  not  only  permitted 
but  was  bound  to  close  the  Straits  in  times  of  peace,  and  no 
navy  might  enter  them  without  his  consent  even  in  times  of 
war.  But  in  times  of  war  he  might,  of  course,  give  the  per- 
mission, and  invite  the  presence  and  co-operation  of  the  arm- 
ed vessels  of  a  foreign  Power  in  the  Sea  of  Marmora.  By 
this  treaty  the  Black  Sea  fleet  of  Russia  became  literally  a 
Black  Sea  fleet,  and  could  no  more  reach  the  Mediterranean 
and  Western  Europe  than  a  boat  on  the  Lake  of  Lucerne 
could  do.  Naturally  Russia  chafed  at  this ;  but  at  the  same 
time  she  was  not  willing  to  see  the  restriction  withdrawn  in 
favor  of  an  arrangement  that  would  leave  the  Straits,  and 
consequently  the  Black  Sea,  open  to  the  navies  of  France 
and  England.  Her  supremacy  in  Eastern  Europe  would 
count  for  little,  her  power  of  coercing  Turkey  would  be  sad- 
ly diminished,  if  the  war-flag  of  England,  for  example,  were 
to  float  side  by  side  with  her  own  in  front  of  Constantino- 
ple or  in  the  Euxine.  Therefore  it  was  natural  that  the  am- 
bition of  Russia  should  tend  toward  the  ultimate  possession 
of  Constantinople  and  the  Straits  for  herself;  but  as  this 
was  an  ambition  the  fulfilment  of  which  seemed  far  off"  and 
beset  with  vast  dangers,  her  object,  meanwhile,  was  to  gain 
as  much  influence  and  ascendency  as  possible  over  the  Otto- 
man Government;  to  make  it  practically  the  vassal  of  Rus- 
sia, and,  in  any  case,  to  prevent  any  other  Great  Power  from 
obtaining  the  influence  and  ascendency  which  she  coveted 
for  herself.  Now  the  tendency  of  this  ambition  and  of  all 
the  intermediate  claims  and  disputes  with  regard  to  the 


WHERE   WAS  LORD  PALMERSTON  ?  481 

opening  or  closing  of  the  Straits  was  of  importance  to  Eu- 
rope generally  as  a  part  of  Russian  aggrandizement;  but  of 
the  Great  Powers  they  concerned  England  most ;  France  as 
a  Mediterranean  and  a  naval  power;  Austria  only  in  a  third 
and  remoter  degree ;  and  Prussia  at  the  time  of  King  Fred- 
erick William  least  of  all.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore, 
that  the  two  Western  Powers  were  not  able  to  carry  their 
accord  with  Prussia  to  the  extent  of  an  alliance  in  war 
against  Russia ;  and  it  was  hardly  possible  then  for  Austria 
to  go  on  if  Prussia  insisted  on  drawing  back.  Thus  it  came 
that  at  a  certain  point  of  the  negotiations  Prussia  fell  off  ab- 
solutely, or  nearly  so;  Austria  undertook  but  a  conditional 
co-operation,  of  which,  as  it  happened,  the  conditions  did  not 
arise ;  and  the  Queen  of  England  announced  that  she  had 
taken  up  arms  against  Russia  "in  conjunction  with  the  Em- 
peror of  the  French." 

To  the  great  majority  of  the  English  people  this  war  was 
popular.  It  was  popular  partly  because  of  the  natural  and 
inevitable  reaction  against  the  doctrines  of  peace  and  mere 
trading  prosperity  which  had  been  preached  somewhat  too 
pertinaciously  for  some  time  before.  But  it  was  popular, 
too,  because  of  its  novelty.  It  was  like  a  return  to  the  youth 
of  the  world  when  England  found  herself  once  more  prepar- 
ing for  the  field.  It  was  like  the  pouring  of  new  blood  into 
old  veins.  The  public  had  grown  impatient  of  the  common 
saying  of  foreign  capitals  that  England  had  joined  the  Peace 
Society,  and  would  never  be  seen  in  battle  any  more.  Mr. 
Kinglake  is  right  when  he  says  that  the  doctrines  of  the 
Peace  Society  had  never  taken  any  hold  of  the  higher 
classes  in  this  country  at  all.  They  had  never,  we  may 
venture  to  add,  taken  any  real  hold  of  the  humbler  class- 
es ;  of  the  workingmen,  for  example.  The  well  educated, 
thoughtful  middle -class,  who  knew  how  much  of  worldly 
happiness  depends  on  a  regular  income,  moderate  taxation, 
and  a  comfortable  home,  supplied  most  of  the  advocates  of 
"  peace,"  as  it  was  scornfully  said,  "  at  any  price."  Let  us 
say,  in  justice  to  a  very  noble  and  very  futile  doctrine^  that 
there  were  no  persons  in  England  who  advocated  peace  "  at 
any  price,"  in  the  ignominious  sense  which  hostile  critics 
pressed  upon  the  words.  There  was  a  small,  a  serious,  and 
a  very  respectable  body  of  persons  who,  out  of  the  purest 

I.— 21 


482  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

motives  of  conscience,  held  that  all  war  was  criminal  and 
offensive  to  the  Deity.  They  were  for  peace  at  any  price, 
exactly  as  they  were  for  truth  at  any  price,  or  conscience 
at  any  price.  They  were  opposed  to  Avar  as  they  were  to 
falsehood  or  to  impiety.  It  seemed  as  natural  to  them  that 
a  man  should  die  unresisting  rather  than  resist  and  kill,  as 
it  does  to  most  persons  who  profess  any  sentiment  of  re- 
ligion or  even  of  honor,  that  a  man  should  die  rather  than 
abjure  the  faith  he  believes  in,  or  tell  a  lie.  It  is  assumed, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  that  any  Englishman  worthy  of  the 
name  would  have  died  by  any  torture  tyranny  could  put  on 
him  rather  than  perform  the  old  ceremony  of  trampling  on 
the  crucifix,  which  certain  heathen  states  were  said  to  have 
sometimes  insisted  on  as  the  price  of  a  captive's  freedom. 
To  the  believers  in  the  peace  doctrine  the  act  of  war  was 
a  trampling  on  the  crucifix,  which  brought  with  it  evil 
consequences  unspeakably  worse  than  the  mere  performance 
of  a  profane  ceremonial.  To  declare  that  they  would  rath- 
er suffer  any  earthly  penalty  of  defeat  or  national  servitude 
than  take  part  in  a  war,  was  only  consistent  with  the  great 
creed  of  their  lives.  It  ought  not  to  have  been  held  as  any 
reproach  to  them.  Even  those  who,  like  this  writer,  have 
no  personal  sympathy  with  such  a  belief,  and  who  hold  that 
a  war  in  a  just  cause  is  an  honor  to  a  nation,  may  still  rec- 
ognize the  purity  and  nobleness  of  the  principle  which  in- 
spired the  votaries  of  peace  and  do  honor  to  it.  But  these 
men  were,  in  any  case,  not  many  at  the  time  when  the 
Crimean  War  broke  out.  They  had  veiy  little  influence 
on  the  course  of  the  national  policy.  They  were  assailed 
with  a  flippant  and  a  somewhat  ignoble  ridicule.  The  worst 
reproach  that  could  be  given  to  men  like  Mr.  Cobden  and 
Mr.  Bright  was  to  accuse  them  of  being  members  of  the 
Peace  Society.  It  does  not  appear  that  either  man  was  a 
member  of  the  actual  organization.  Mr.  Bright's  religious 
creed  made  him  necessarily  a  votary  of  peace ;  Mr.  Cobden 
had  attended  meetings  called  with  the  futile  purpose  of  es- 
tablishing peace  among  nations  by  the  operation  of  good 
feeling  and  of  common-sense.  But  for  a  considerable  time 
the  temper  of  the  English  people  was  such  as  to  render  any 
talk  about  peace  not  only  unprofitable  but  perilous  to  the 
very  cause  of  peace  itself.  Some  of  the  leading  members 


WHERE   WAS  LORD  PALMERSTON  ?  483 

of  the  Peace  Society  did  actually  get  up  a  deputation  to 
the  Emperor  Nicholas  to  appeal  to  his  better  feelings;  and 
of  course  they  were  charmed  by  the  manners  of  the  Emper- 
or, who  made  it  his  business  to  be  in  a  very  gracious  humor, 
and  spoke  them  fair,  and  introduced  them  in  the  most  un- 
ceremonious way  to  his  wife.  Such  a  visit  counted  for  noth- 
ing in  Russia,  and  at  home  it  only  tended  to  make  people 
angry  and  impatient,  and  to  put  the  cause  of  peace  in  great- 
er jeopardy  than  ever.  Viewed  as  a  practical  influence,  the 
peace  doctrine  as  completely  broke  down  as  a  general  reso- 
lution against  the  making  of  monqy  might  have  done  dur- 
ing the  time  of  the  mania  for  speculation  in  railway  shares. 
But  it  did  not  merely  break  down  of  itself.  It  carried  some 
great  influences  down  with  it  for  the  time — influences  that 
were  not  a  part  of  itself.  The  eloquence  that  had  coerced 
the  intellect  and  reasoning  power  of  Peel  into  a  complete 
surrender  to  the  doctrines  of  Free-trade,  the  eloquence  that 
had  aroused  the  populations  of  all  the  cities  of  England  and 
had  conquered  the  House  of  Commons,  was  destined  now  to 
call  aloud  to  solitude.  Mr.  Cobden  and  Mr.  Bright  address- 
ed their  constituents  arid  their  countrymen  in  vain.  The 
fact  that  they  were  believed  to  be  opposed  on  principle  to 
all  wars  put  them  out  of  court  in  public  estimation,  as  Mr. 
Kinglake  justly  observes,  when  they  went  about  to  argue 
against  this  particular  war. 

In  the  cabinet  itself  there  were  men  who  disliked  the  idea 
of  a  war  quite  as  much  as  they  did.  Lord  Aberdeen  detest- 
ed war,  and  thought  it  so  absurd  a  way  of  settling  national 
disputes,  that  almost  until  the  first  cannon-shot  had  been 
fired  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  in  the  possibility 
of  the  intelligent  English  people  being  drawn  into  it.  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  a  conscientious  and  a  sensitive  objection  to 
war  in  general  as  a  brutal  and  an  unchristian  occupation ;  al- 
though his  feelings  would  not  have  carried  him  so  far  away 
as  to  prevent  his  recognition  of  the  fact  that  war  might  often 
be  a  just,  a  necessary,  and  a  glorious  undertaking  on  the  part 
of  a  civilized  nation.  The  difficulties  of  the  hour  were  con- 
siderably enhanced  by  the  differences  of  opinion  that  pre- 
vailed in  the  cabinet. 

There  were  other  differences  there  as  well  as  those  that 
belonged  to  the  mere  abstract  question  of  the  glory  or  the 


484  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

guilt  of  war.  It  soon  became  clear  that  two  parties  of  the 
cabinet  looked  on  the  war  and  its  objects  with  different  eyes 
and  interests.  Lord  Palmerston  wanted  simply  to  put  down 
Russia  and  uphold  Turkey.  Others  were  specially  con- 
cerned for  the  Christian  populations  of  Turkey  and  their 
better  government.  Lord  Palmerston  not  merely  thought 
that  the  interests  of  England  called  for  some  check  to  the 
aggressiveness  of  Russia;  he  liked  the  Turk  for  himself;  he 
had  faith  in  the  future  of  Turkey:  he  went  so  far,  even,  as 
to  proclaim  his  belief  in  the  endurance  of  her  military  pow- 
er. Give  Turkey  single-handed  a  fair  chance,  he  argued,  and 
she  would  beat  Russia.  He  did  not  believe  either  in  the 
disaffection  of  the  Christian  populations  or  in  the  stories  of 
their  oppression.  He  regarded  all  these  stories  as  part  of 
the  plans  and  inventions  of  Russia.  He  had  no  half  beliefs 
in  the  matter  at  all.  The  Christian  populations  and  their 
grievances  he  regarded,  in  plain  language,  as  mere  hum- 
bugs ;  he  looked  upon  the  Turk  as  a  very  fine  fellow  whom 
all  chivalric  minds  ought  to  respect.  He  believed  all  that 
was  said  upon  the  one  side  and  nothing  upon  the  other;  he 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  this  long  ago,  and  no  arguments  or 
facts  could  now  shake  his  convictions.  A  belief  of  this  kind 
may  have  been  very  unphilosophic.  It  was  undoubtedly,  in 
many  respects,  the  birth  of  mere  prejudice,  independent  of 
fact  or  reasoning.  But  the  temper  born  of  such  a  belief  is 
exactly  that  which  should  have  the  making  of  a  war  intrust- 
ed to  it.  Lord  Palmerston  saw  his  way  straight  before  him. 
The  brave  Turk  had  to  be  supported ;  the  wicked  Russian 
had  to  be  put  down.  On  one  side  there  were  Lord  Aber- 
deen, who  did  not  believe  any  one  seriously  meant  to  be  so 
barbarous  as  to  go  to  war,  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  shrank 
from  war  in  general,  and  was  not  yet  quite  certain  whether 
England  had  any  right  to  undertake  this  war;  the  two  be- 
ing, furthermore,  concerned  far  more  for  the  welfare  of  Tur- 
key's Christian  subjects  than  for  the  stability  of  Turkey 
or  the  humiliation  of  Russia.  On  the  other  side  was  Lord 
Palmerston,  gay,  resolute,  clear  as  to  his  own  purpose,  con- 
vinced to  the  heart's  core  of  everything  which  just  then  it 
was  for  the  advantage  of  his  cause  to  believe.  It  was  im- 
possible to  doubt  on  which  side  were  to  be  found  the  mate- 
rials for  the  successful  conduct  of  the  enterprise  which  was 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  485 

now  so  popular  with  the  country.  The  most  conscientious 
men  might  differ  about  the  prudence  or  the  moral  propriety 
of  the  war ;  but  to  those  who  once  accepted  its  necessity  and 
wished  our  side  to  win,  there  could  be  no  possible  doubt, 
even  for  members  of  the  Peace  Society,  as  to  the  importance 
of  having  Lord  Palmerston  either  at  the  head  of  affairs  or 
in  charge  of  the  war  itself.  The  moment  the  war  actually 
broke  out  it  became  evident  to  every  one  that  Palmerston's 
interval  of  comparative  inaction  and  obscurity  was  well-nigh 
over. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE   INVASION   OF   THE    CKIMEA. 

ENGLAND,  then,  and  France  entered  the  war  as  allies. 
Lord  Raglan,  formerly  Lord  Fitzroy  Somerset,  an  old  pupil 
of  the  Great  Duke  in  the  Peninsular  War,  and  who  had  lost 
his  right  arm  serving  under  Wellington  at  Waterloo,  was 
appointed  to  command  the  English  forces.  Marshal  St.  Ar- 
naud,  a  bold,  brilliant  soldier  of  fortune,  was  intrusted  by  the 
Emperor  of  the  French  with  the  leadership  of  the  soldiers 
of  France.  The  allied  forces  went  out  to  the  East  and  as- 
sembled at  Varna,  on  the  Black  Sea  shore,  from  which  they 
were  to  make  their  descent  on  the  Crimea.  The  war,  mean- 
time, had  gone  badly  for  the  Emperor  of  Russia  in  his  at- 
tempt to  crush  the  Turks.  The  Turks  had  found  in  Omar 
Pasha  a  commander  of  remarkable  ability  and  energy ;  and 
they  had  in  one  or  two  instances  received  the  unexpected 
aid  and  counsel  of  clever  and  successful  Englishmen.  A  sin- 
gularly brilliant  episode  in  the  opening  part  of  the  war  was 
the  defence  of  the  earthworks  of  Silistria,  on  the  Bulgarian 
bank  of  the  Danube,  by  a  body  of  Turkish  troops  under  the 
directions  of  two  young  Englishmen — Captain  Butler,  of  the 
Ceylon  Rifles,  and  Lieutenant  Nasmyth,  of  the  East  India 
Company's  Service.  These  young  soldiers  had  voluntarily 
undertaken  the  danger  and  responsibility  of  the  defence. 
Butler  was  killed,  but  the  Russians  were  completely  foiled, 
and  had  to  raise  the  siege.  At  Giurgevo  and  other  places 
the  Russians  were  likewise  repulsed  ;  and  the  invasion  of  the 
Danubian  provinces  was  already,  to  all  intents,  a  failure. 


486  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Mr.  Kinglake  and  other  writers  have  argued  that  but  for 
the  ambition  of  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and  the  excited 
temper  of  the  English  people  the  war  might  well  have  end- 
ed then  and  there.  The  Emperor  of  Russia  had  found,  it  is 
contended,  that  he  could  not  maintain  an  invasion  of  Euro- 
pean Turkey ;  his  fleet  was  confined  to  its  ports  in  the  Black 
Sea,  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  but  to  make  peace.  But 
we  confess  we  do  not  see  with  what  propriety  or  wisdom 
the  allies,  having  entered  on  the  enterprise  at  all,  could  have 
abandoned  it  at  such  a  moment,  and  allowed  the  Czar  to  es- 
cape thus  merely  scotched.  However  brilliant  and  gratify- 
ing the  successes  obtained  against  the  Russians,  they  were 
but  a  series  of  what  might  be  called  outpost  actions.  They 
could  not  be  supposed  to  have  tested  the  resources  of  Russia 
or  weakened  her  strength.  They  had  humbled  and  vexed 
her  just  enough  to  make  her  doubly  resentful,  and  no  more. 
It  seems  impossible  to  suppose  that  such  trivial  disasters 
could  have  affected  in  the  slightest  degree  the  historic  march 
of  Russian  ambition,  supposing  such  a  movement  to  exist. 
If  we  allow  the  purpose  with  which  England  entered  the 
war  to  be  just  and  reasonable,  then  we  think  the  instinct  of 
the  English  people  was  sound  and  true  which  would  have 
refused  to  allow  Russia  to  get  off  with  one  or  two  trifling 
checks,  and  to  nurse  her  wrath  and  keep  her  vengeance  wait- 
ing for  a  better  chance  some  other  time.  The  allies  went 
on.  They  sailed  from  Varna  for  the  Crimea  nearly  three 
months  after  the  raising  of  the  siege  of  Silistria. 

There  is  much  discussion  as  to  the  original  author  of  the 
project  for  the  invasion  of  the  Crimea.  The  Emperor  Na- 
poleon has  had  it  ascribed  to  him ;  so  has  Lord  Palmerston  ; 
so  has  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  ;  so,  according  to  Mr.  King- 
lake,  has  the  Times  newspaper.  It  does  not  much  concern 
us  to  know  in  whom  the  idea  originated,  but  it  is  of  some 
importance  to  know  that  it  was  essentially  a  civilian's  .and 
not  a  soldier's  idea.  It  took  possession  almost  simultaneous- 
ly, so  far  as  we  can  observe,  of  the  minds  of  several  states- 
men, and  it  had  a  sudden  fascination  for  the  public.  The 
Emperor  Nicholas  had  raised  and  sheltered  his  Black  Sea 
fleet  at  Sebastopol.  That  fleet  had  sallied  forth  from  Se- 
bastopol  to  commit  what  was  called  the  massacre  of  Sinope. 
Sebastopol  was  the  great  arsenal  of  Russia.  It  was  the  point 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  487 

from  which  Turkey  was  threatened  ;  from  which,  it  was  uni- 
versally believed,  the  embodied  ambition  of  Russia  was  one 
day  to  make  its  most  formidable  effort  of  aggression.  With- 
in the  fence  of  its  vast  sea-forts  the  fleet  of  the  Black  Sea 
lay  screened.  From  the  moment  when  the  vessels  of  Eng- 
land and  France  entered  the  Euxine  the  Russian  fleet  had 
withdrawn  behind  the  curtain  of  these  defences,  and  was 
seen  upon  the  open  waves  no  more.  If,  therefore,  Sebastopol 
could  be  taken  or  destroyed,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  whole 
material  fabric,  put  together  at  such  cost  and  labor  for  the 
execution  of  the  schemes  of  Russia,  would  be  shattered  at 
a  blow.  There  seemed  a  dramatic  justice  in  the  idea.  It 
could  not  fail  to  commend  itself  to  the  popular  mind. 

Mr.  Kinglake  has  given  the  world  an  amusing  picture  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  despatch  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
ordering  the  invasion  of  the  Crimea — for  it  really  amounted 
to  an  order — was  read  to  his  colleagues  in  the  cabinet.  It 
was  a  despatch  of  the  utmost  importance ;  for  the  terms  in 
which  it  pressed  the  project  on  Lord  Raglan  really  rendered 
it  almost  impossible  for  the  commander-in-chief  to  use  his 
own  discretion.  It  ought  to  have  been  considered  sentence 
by  sentence,  word  by  word.  It  was  read,  Mr.  Kinglake  af- 
firms, to  a  number  of  cabinet  ministers,  most  of  whom  had 
fallen  fast  asleep.  The  day  was  warm,  he  says ;  the  despatch 
was  long ;  the  reading  was  somewhat  monotonous.  Most 
of  those  who  tried  to  listen  found  the  soporific  influence  ir- 
resistible. As  Sam  Weller  would  have  said,  poppies  were 
nothing  to  it.  The  statesmen  fell  asleep ;  and  there  was  no 
alteration  made  in  the  despatch.  All  this  is  very  amusing ; 
and  it  is,  we  believe,  true  enough  that  at  the  particular  meet- 
ing to  which  Mr.  Kinglake  refers  there  was  a  good  deal  of 
nodding  of  sleepy  heads  and  closing  of  tired  eyelids.  But 
it  is  not  fair  to  say  that  these  slumbers  had  anything  to  do 
with  the  subsequent  events  of  the  war.  The  reading  of  the 
despatch  was  purely  a  piece  of  formality ;  for  the  project  it 
was  to  recommend  had  been  discussed  very  fully  before,  and 
the  minds  of  most  members  of  the  cabinet  were  finally  made 
up.  The  28th  of  June,  1854,  was  the  day  of  the  slumbering 
cabinet.  But  Lord  Palmerston  had,  during  the  whole  of  the 
previous  fortnight  at  least,  been  urging  on  the  cabinet,  and 
on  individual  members  of  it  separately,  the  Duke  of  New- 


A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

castle  iii  especial,  the  project  of  an  invasion  of  the  Crimea 
and  an  attempt  on  Sebastopol.  With  all  the  energy  and 
strenuousness  of  his  nature,  he  had  been  urging  this  by  argu- 
ments in  the  cabinet,  by  written  memoranda  for  the  consid- 
eration of  each  member  of  the  cabinet  separately,  and  by  long, 
earnest  letters  addressed  to  particular  members  of  the  cab- 
inet. Many  of  these  documents,  of  the  existence  of  which 
Mr.  Kinglake  was  doubtless  not  aware  when  he  set  down  his 
vivacious  and  satirical  account  of  the  sleeping  cabinet,  have 
since  been  published.  The  plan  had  also  been  greatly  fa- 
vored and  much  urged  by  the  Emperor  of  the  French  before 
the  day  of  the  sleep  of  the  statesmen ;  indeed,  as  has  been 
said  already,  he  receives  from  manjr  persons  the  credit  of 
having  originated  it.  The  plan,  therefore,  good  or  bad,  was 
thoroughly  known  to  the  cabinet,  and  had  been  argued  for 
and  against  over  and  over  again  before  the  Duke  of  Newcas- 
tle read  aloud  to  drowsy  ears  the  despatch  recommending  it 
to  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  British  forces  in  the  field. 
The  perusal  of  the  despatch  was  a  mere  form.  It  would, 
indeed,  have  been  better  if  the  most  wearied  statesman  had 
contrived  to  pay  a  full  attention  to  it,  but  the  want  of  such 
respect  in  nowise  affected  the  policy  of  the  country.  It  is  a 
pity  to  have  to  spoil  so  amusing  a  story  as  Mr.  Kinglake's ; 
but  the  commonplace  truth  has  to  be  told  that  the  invasion 
of  the  Crimea  was  not  due  to  the  crotchet  of  one  minister 
and  the  drowsiness  of  all  the  rest. 

The  invasion  of  the  Crimea,  however,  was  not  a  soldier's 
project.  It  was  not  welcomed  by  the  English  or  the  French 
commander.  It  was  undertaken  by  Lord  Raglan  out  of  def- 
erence to  the  recommendations  of  the  Government;  and  by 
Marshal  St.  Arnaud  out  of  deference  to  the  Emperor  of  the 
French,  and  because  Lord  Raglan,  too,  did  not  see  his  way  to 
decline  the  responsibility  of  it.  The  allied  forces  were,  there- 
fore, conveyed  to  the  south-western  shore  of  the  Crimea,  and 
effected  a  landing  in  Kalamita  Bay,  a  short  distance  north 
of  the  point  at  which  the  river  Alma  runs  into  the  sea.  Se- 
bastopol itself  lies  about  thirty  miles  to  the  south ;  and  then 
more  southward  still,  divided  by  the  bulk  of  a  jutting  prom- 
ontory from  Sebastopol,  is  the  harbor  of  Balaklava.  The 
disembarkation  began  on  the  morning  of  September  14th, 
1854.  It  was  completed  on  the  fifth  day;  and  there  were 


THE  INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  489 

then  some  27,000  English,  30,000  French,  and  7000  Turks 
landed  on  the  shores  of  Catherine  the  Great's  Crimea.  The 
landing  was  effected  without  any  opposition  from  the  Rus- 
sians. On  September  19th,  the  allies  marched  out  of  their 
encampments  and  moved  southward  in  the  direction  of  Se- 
bastopol.  They  had  a  skirmish  or  two  with  a  reconnoitring 
force  of  Russian  cavalry  and  Cossacks;  but  they  had  no  bus- 
iness of  genuine  war  until  they  reached  the  nearer  bank  of 
the  Alma.  The  Russians,  in  great  strength,  had  taken  up  a 
splendid  position  on  the  heights  that  fringed  the  other  side  of 
the  river.  The  allied  forces  reached  the  Alma  about  noon  on 
September  20th.  They  found  that  they  had  to  cross  the  river 
in  the  face  of  the  Russian  batteries  armed  with  heavy  guns 
on  the  highest  point  of  the  hills  or  bluffs,  of  scattered  artil- 
lery, and  of  dense  masses  of  infantry  which  covered  the  hills. 
The  Russians  were  under  the  command  of  Prince  Mentschi- 
koff.  It  is  certain  that  Prince  MentschikofF  believed  his  po- 
sition unassailable,  and  was  convinced  that  his  enemies  were 
delivered  into  his  hands  when  he  saw  the  allies  approach  and 
attempt  to  effect  the  crossing  of  the  river.  He  had  allowed 
them,  of  deliberate  purpose,  to  approach  thus  far.  He  might 
have  attacked  them  on  their  landing,  or  on  their  two  days' 
march  toward  the  river.  But  he  did  not  choose  to  do  any- 
thing of  the  kind.  He  had  carefully  sought  out  a  strong  and 
what  he  considered  an  impregnable  position.  He  had  found 
it,  as  he  believed,  on  the  south  bank  of  the  Alma;  and  there 
he  was  simply  biding  his  time.  His  idea  was  that  he  could 
hold  his  ground  for  some  days  against  the  allies  with  ease ; 
that  he  would  keep  them  there,  play  with  them,  until  the 
great  re-enforcements  he  was  expecting  could  come  to  him; 
and  then  he  would  suddenly  take  the  offensive  and  crush  the 
enemy.  He  proposed  to  make  of  the  Alma  and  its  banks  the 
grave  of  the  invaders.  But  with  characteristic  arrogance 
and  lack  of  care  he  had  neglected  some  of  the  very  precau- 
tions which  were  essentially  necessary  to  secure  any  posi- 
tion, however  strong.  He  had  not  taken  the  pains  to  make 
himself  certain  that  every  easy  access  to  his  position  was 
closed  against  the  attack  of  the  enemy.  The  attack  was 
made  with  desperate  courage  on  the  part  of  the  allies,  but 
without  any  great  skill  of  leadership  or  tenacity  of  discipline. 
It  was  rather  a  pell-mell  sort  of  fight,  in  which  the  headlong 

21* 


490  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN"  TIMES. 

courage  and  the  indomitable  obstinacy  of  the  English  and 
French  troops  carried  all  before  them  at  last.  A  study  of 
the  battle  is  of  little  profit  to  the  ordinary  reader.  It  was 
an  heroic  scramble.  There  was  little  coherence  of  action 
between  the  allied  forces.  But  there  was  happily  an  almost 
total  absence  of  generalship  on  the  part  of  the  Russians. 
The  soldiers  of  the  Czar  fought  stoutly  and  stubbornly,  as 
they  have  always  done ;  but  they  could  not  stand  up  against 
the  blended  vehemence  and  obstinacy  of  the  English  and 
French.  The  river  was  crossed,  the  opposite  heights  were 
mounted,  Prince  Mentschikoff's  great  redoubt  was  carried, 
the  Russians  were  driven  from  the  field,  the  allies  occupied 
their  ground  ;  the  victory  was  to  the  Western  Powers.  In- 
deed, it  would  not  be  unfair  to  say  that  the  victory  was  to 
the  English :  owing  to  whatever  cause,  the  French  did  not 
take  that  share  in  the  heat  of  the  battle  which  their  strength 
and  their  military  genius  might  have  led  men  to  expect.  St. 
Arnaud,  their  commander-in-chief,  was  in  wretched  health, 
on  the  point  of  death,  in  fact ;  he  was  in  no  condition  to 
guide  the  battle ;  a  brilliant  enterprise  of  General  Bosquet 
was  ill-suppoi'ted,  and  had  nearly  proved  a  failure ;  and  Prince 
Napoleon's  division  got  hopelessly  jammed  up  and  confused. 
Perhaps  it  would  be  fairer  to  say  that  in  the  confusion  and 
scramble  of  the  whole  affair  we  were  more  lucky  than  the 
French.  If  a  number  of  men  are  rushing  headlong  and  in 
the  dark  toward  some  distant  point,  one  may  run  against  an 
unthought-of  obstacle  and  fall  down,  and  so  lose  his  chance, 
while  his  comrade  happens  to  meet  with  no  such  stumbling- 
block,  and  goes  right  on.  Perhaps  this  illustration  may  not 
unfairly  distribute  the  parts  taken  in  the  battle.  It  would 
be  superfluous  to  say  that  the  French  fought  splendidly 
where  they  had  any  real  chance  of  fighting.  But  the  luck 
of  the  day  was  not  with  them.  On  all  sides  the  battle  was 
fought  without  generalship.  On  all  sides  the  bravery  of  the 
officers  and  men  was  worthy  of  any  general.  Our  men  were 
the  luckiest.  They  saw  the  heights;  they  saw  the  enemy 
there ;  they  made  for  him  ;  they  got  at  him ;  they  would  not 
go  back;  and  so  he  had  to  give  way.  That  was  the  history 
of  the  day.  The  big  scramble  was  all  over  in  a  few  hours. 
The  first  field  was  fought,  and  we  had  won. 

The  Russians  ought  to  have  been  pursued.     They  them- 


THE   INVASION   OF   THE   CRIMEA.  491 

selves  fully  expected  a  pursuit.  They  retreated  in  some- 
thing like  utter  confusion,  eager  to  put  the  Katcha  river, 
which  runs  south  of  the  Alma  and  with  a  somewhat  simi- 
lar course,  between  them  and  the  imaginary  pursuers.  Had 
they  been  followed  to  the  Katcha  they  might  have  been  all 
made  prisoners  or  destroyed.  But  there  was  no  pursuit. 
Lord  Raglan  was  eager  to  follow  up  the  victory;  but  the 
French  had  as  yet  hardly  any  cavalry,  and  Marshal  St.  Ar- 
naud  would  not  agree  to  any  further  enterprise  that  day. 
Lord  Raglan  believed  that  he  ought  not  to  persist;  and 
nothing  was  done.  The  Russians  were  unable  at  first  to  be- 
lieve in  their  good  fortune.  It  seemed  to  them  for  a  long 
time  impossible  that  any  commanders  in  the  world  could 
have  failed,  under  conditions  so  tempting,  to  follow  a  flying 
and  disordered  enemy. 

Except  for  the  bravery  of  those  who  fought,  the  battle 
was  not  much  to  boast  of.  The  allies  together  considerably 
outnumbered  the  Russians,  although,  from  the  causes  we 
have  mentioned,  the  Englishmen  were  left  throughout  the 
greater  part  of  the  day  to  encounter  an  enemy  numerically 
superior,  posted  on  difficult  and  commanding  heights.  But 
it  was  the  first  great  battle  which  for  nearly  forty  years  our 
soldiers  had  fought  with  a  civilized  enemy.  The  military 
authorities  and  the  country  were  well  disposed  to  make  the 
most  of  it.  At  this  distance  of  time  it  is  almost  touching  to 
read  some  of  the  heroic  contemporaneous  descriptions  of  the 
great  scramble  of  the  Alma.  It  might  almost  seem  as  if, 
in  the  imaginings  of  the  enthusiastic  historians,  Englishmen 
had  never  mounted  heights  and  defeated  superior  numbers 
before.  The  sublime  triumphs  against  every  adverse  condi- 
tion which  had  been  won  by  the  genius  of  a  Marlborough  or 
a  Wellington  could  not  have  been  celebrated  in  language 
of  more  exalted  dithyrambic  pomp.  The  gallant  medley  on 
the  banks  of  the  Alma  and  the  fruitless  interval  of  inaction 
that  followed  it  were  told  of  as  if  men  were  speaking  of 
some  battle  of  the  gods. 

Very  soon,  however,  a  different  note  came  to  be  sounded. 
The  campaign  had  been  opened  under  conditions  differing 
from  those  of  most  campaigns  that  went  before  it.  Science 
had  added  many  new  discoveries  to  the  art  of  war.  Litera- 
ture had  added  one  remarkable  contribution  of  her  own  to 


492  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

the  conditions  amidst  which  campaigns  were  to  be  carried 
on.  She  had  added  the  "  special  correspondent."  The  old- 
fashioned  historiographer  of  wars  travelled  to  please  sover- 
eigns, and  minister  to  the  self-conceit  of  conquerors.  The 
modern  special  correspondent  had  a  very  different  purpose. 
He  watched  the  movements  of  armies  and  criticised  the  pol- 
icy of  generals  in  the  interest  of  some  journal,  which  for  its 
part  was  concerned  only  for  the  information  of  the  public. 
No  favor  that  courts  or  monarchs  could  bestow  was  worthy 
a  moment's  consideration  in  the  mind  even  of  the  most  self- 
ish proprietor  of  a  newspaper  when  compared  with  the  re- 
ward which  the  public  could  give  to  him  and  to  his  paper 
for  quick  and  accurate  news  and  trustworthy  comment. 
The  business  of  the  special  correspondent  has  grown  so 
much  since  the  Crimean  War  that  we  are  now  inclined  to 
look  back  upon  the  war  correspondents  of  those  days  almost 
as  men  then  did  upon  the  old-fashioned  historiographer. 
The  war  correspondent  now  scrawls  his  despatches  as  he  sits 
in  his  saddle  under  the  fire  of  the  enemy ;  he  scrawls  them 
with  a  pencil,  noting  and  describing  each  incident  of  the 
fight,  so  far  as  he  can  see  it,  as  coolly  as  if  he  were  describ- 
ing a  review  of  volunteers  in  Hyde  Park;  and  he  contrives 
to  send  off  his  narrative  by  telegraph  before  the  victor  in 
the  fight  has  begun  to  pursue,  or  has  settled  down  to  hold 
the  ground  he  won;  and  the  war  correspondent's  story  is 
expected  to  be  as  brilliant  and  picturesque  in  style  as  it 
ought  to  be  exact  and  faithful  in  its  statements.  In  the 
days  of  the  Crimea  things  had  not  advanced  quite  so  far  as 
that ;  the  war  was  well  on  before  the  submarine  telegraph 
between  Varna  and  the  Crimea  allowed  of  daily  reports ; 
but  the  feats  of  the  war  correspondent  then  filled  men's 
minds  with  wonder.  When  the  expedition  was  leaving 
England  it  was  accompanied  by  a  special  correspondent 
from  each  of  the  great  daily  papers  of  London.  The  Times 
sent  out  a  representative  whose  name  almost  immediately 
became  celebrated — Mr.  William  Howard  Russell,  the  preux 
chevalier  of  war  correspondents  in  that  day,  as  Mr.  Archi- 
bald Forbes  of  the  Daily  JVeics  is  in  this.  Mr.  Russell  ren- 
dered some  service  to  the  English  army  and  to  his  country, 
however,  which  no  brilliancy  of  literary  style  would  alone 
have  enabled  him  to  do.  It  was  to  his  sreat  credit  as  a 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  493 

man  of  judgment  and  observation  that,  being  a  civilian  who 
had  never  before  seen  one  puff  of  war-smoke,  he  was  able  to 
distinguish  between  the  confusion  inseparable  from  all  act- 
ual levying  of  war  and  the  confusion  that  comes  of  distinct- 
ly bad  administration.  To  the  unaccustomed  eye  of  an  or- 
dinary civilian  the  whole  progress  of  a  campaign,  the  devel- 
opment of  a  battle,  the  arrangements  of  the  commissariat, 
appear,  at  any  moment  of  actual  pressure,  to  be  nothing  but 
a  mass  of  confusion.  He  is  accustomed  in  civil  life  to  find 
everything  in  its  proper  place,  and  every  emergency  well 
provided  for.  When  he  is  suddenly  plunged  into  the  midst 
of  a  campaign  he  is  apt  to  think  that  everything  must  be 
going  wrong;  or  else  he  assumes  contentedly  that  the  whole 
is  in  the  hands  of  persons  who  know  better  than  he,  and 
that  it  would  be  absurd  on  his  part  to  attempt  to  criticise 
the  arrangements  of  the  men  whose  business  it  is  to  under- 
stand them.  Mr.  Russell  soon  saw  that  there  was  confu- 
sion ;  and  he  had  the  soundness  of  judgment  to  know  that 
the  confusion  was  that  of  a  breaking-down  system.  There- 
fore, while  the  fervor  of  delight  in  the  courage  and  success 
of  our  army  was  still  fresh  in  the  minds  of  the  public  at 
home,  while  every  music-hall  was  ringing  with  the  cheap  re- 
wards of  valor  in  the  shape  of  popular  glorifications  of  our 
commanders  and  our  soldiers,  the  readers  of  the  Times  be- 
gan to  learn  that  things  were  faring  badly  indeed  with  the 
conquering  army  of  the  Alma.  The  ranks  were  thinned  by 
the  ravages  of  cholera.  The  men  were  pursued  by  cholera 
to  the  very  battle-field,  Lord  Raglan  himself  said.  No  sys- 
tem can  charm  away  all  the  effects  of  climate ;.  but  it  ap- 
peared only  too  soon  that  the  arrangements  made  to  encoun- 
ter the  indirect  and  inevitable  dangers  of  a  campaign  were 
miserably  inefficient.  The  hospitals  were  in  a  wretchedly 
disorganized  condition.  Stores  of  medicines  and  strength- 
ening food  were  decaying  in  places  where  no  one  wanted 
them  or  could  well  get  at  them,  while  men  were  dying  in 
hundreds  among  our  tents  in  the  Crimea  for  lack  of  them. 
The  system  of  clothing,  of  transport,  of  feeding,  of  nursing — 
everything  had  broken  down.  Ample  provisions  had  been 
got  together  and  paid  for ;  and  when  they  came  to  be  need- 
ed no  one  knew  where  to  get  at  them.  The  special  corre- 
spondent of  the  Times  and  other  correspondents  continued 


494  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

to  din  these  things  into  the  ears  of  the  public  at  home. 
Exultation  began  to  give  Avay  to  a  feeling  of  dismay.  The 
patriotic  anger  against  the  Russians  was  changed  for  a 
mood  of  deep  indignation  against  our  own  authorities  and 
our  own  war  administration.  It  soon  became  apparent  to 
every  one  that  the  whole  campaign  had  been  planned  on 
the  assumption  that  it  was  to  be  like  the  career  of  the  hero 
whom  Byron  laments,  "  brief,  brave,  and  glorious."  Our 
military  authorities  here  at  home — we  do  not  speak  of  the 
commanders  in  the  field — had  made  up  their  minds  that  Se- 
bastopol  was  to  fall,  like  another  Jericho,  at  the  sound  of 
the  war-trumpets'  blast. 

Our  commanders  in  the  field  were,  on  the  contrary,  rather 
disposed  to  overrate  than  to  underrate  the  strength  of  the 
Russians.  It  was,  therefore,  somewhat  like  the  condition 
of  things  described  in  Macaulay's  ballad ;  those  behind  cried 
forward,  those  in  front  called  back.  It  is  very  likely  that 
if  a  sudden  dash  had  been  made  at  Sebastopol  by  land  and 
sea,  it  might  have  been  taken  almost  at  the  very  opening 
of  the  war.  But  the  delay  gave  the  Russians  full  warning, 
and  they  did  not  neglect  it.  On  the  third  day  after  the 
battle  of  the  Alma  the  Russians  sank  seven  vessels  of  their 
Black  Sea  fleet  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbor  of  Sebastopol. 
This  was  done  full  in  the  sight  of  the  allied  fleets,  who  at 
first,  misunderstanding  the  movements  going  on  among  the 
enemy,  thought  the  Russian  squadron  were  about  to  come 
out  from  their  shelter  and  try  conclusions  with  the  Western 
ships.  But  the  real  purpose  of  the  Russians  became  soon 
apparent.  Under  the  eyes  of  the  allies  the  seven  vessels 
slowly  settled  down  and  sank  in  the  water,  until  at  last  only 
the  tops  of  their  masts  were  to  be  seen ;  and  the  entrance 
of  the  harbor  was  barred  as  by  sunken  rocks  against  any 
approach  of  an  enemy's  ship.  There  was  an  end  to  every 
dream  of  a  sudden  capture  of  Sebastopol. 

The  allied  armies  moved  again  from  their  positions  on  the 
Alma;  but  they  did  not  direct  their  march  to  the  north  side 
of  Sebastopol.  They  made  for  Balaklava,  which  lies  south 
of  the  city,  on  the  other  side  of  a  promontory,  and  which  has 
a  port  that  might  enable  them  to  secure  a  constant  means 
of  communication  between  the  armies  and  the  fleets.  To 
reach  Balaklava  the  allied  forces  had  to  undertake  a  long 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CKIMEA.  495 

and  fatiguing  flank  march,  passing  Sebastopol  on  their  right. 
They  accomplished  the  march  in  safety,  and  occupied  the 
heights  above  Balaklava,  while  the  fleets  appeared  at  the 
same  time  in  the  harbor.  Sebastopol  was  but  a  few  miles 
off",  and  preparations  were  at  once  made  for  an  attack  on  it 
by  land  and  sea.  On  October  17th  the  attack  began.  It 
was  practically  a  failure.  Nothing  better,  indeed,  could 
well  have  been  expected.  The  fleet  could  not  get  near 
enough  to  the  sea-forts  of  Sebastopol  to  make  their  broad- 
sides of  any  real  effect,  because  of  the  shallow  water  and 
the  sunken  ships ;  and  although  the  attack  from  the  land 
was  vigorous  and  was  fiercely  kept  up,  yet  it  could  not  carry 
its  object.  It  became  clear  that  Sebastopol  was  not  to  be 
taken  by  any  coup  de  main,  and  the  allies  had  not  men 
enough  to  invest  it.  They  were,  therefore,  to  some  extent 
themselves  in  the  condition  of  a  besieged  force,  for  the  Rus- 
sians had  a  large  anny  outside  Sebastopol  ready  to  make 
every  sacrifice  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  English 
and  French  from  getting  even  a  chance  of  undisturbed 
operations  against  it. 

The  Russians  attacked  the  allies  fiercely  on  October  25th, 
in  the  hope  of  obtaining  possession  of  Balaklava.  The  at- 
tempt was  bold  and  brilliant,  but  it  was  splendidly  repulsed. 
Never  did  a  day  of  battle  do  more  credit  to  English  courage, 
or  less,  perhaps,  to  English  generalship.  The  cavalry  par- 
ticularly distinguished  themselves.  It  was  in  great  meas- 
ure, on  our  side,  a  cavalry  action.  It  will  be  memorable  in 
all  English  history  as  the  battle  in  which  occurred  the  fa- 
mous charge  of  the  Light  Brigade.  Owing  to  some  fatal 
misconception  of  the  meaning  of  an  order  from  the  com- 
mander-in-chief,  the  Light  Brigade,  607  men  in  all,  charged 
what  has  been  rightly  described  as  "the  Russian  army  in 
position."  The  brigade  was  composed  of  118  men  of  the 
4th  Light  Dragoons;  104  of  the  8th  Hussars;  110  of  the 
llth  Hussars;  130  of  the  13th  Light  Dragoons;  and  145  of 
the  17th  Lancers.  Of  the  607  men  198  came  back.  Long, 
painful,  and  hopeless  were  the  disputes  about  this  fatal  or- 
der. The  controversy  can  never  be  wholly  settled.  The  of- 
ficer who  bore  the  order  was  one  of  the  first  who  fell  in  the 
outset.  All  Europe,  all  the  world,  rang  with  wonder  and 
admiration  of  the  futile  and  splendid  charge.  The  poet- 


A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

laureate  sang  of  it  in  spirited  verses.  Perhaps  its  best 
epitaph  was  contained  in  the  celebrated  comment  ascribed 
to  the  French  General  Bosquet,  and  which  has  since  become 
proverbial,  and  been  quoted  until  men  are  well-nigh  tired 
of  it — "It  was  magnificent,  but  it  was  not  war." 

Next  day  the  enemy  made  another  vigorous  attack,  on  a 
much  larger  scale,  moving  out  of  Sebastopol  itself,  and  were 
again  repulsed.  The  allies  were  able  to  prevent  the  troops 
who  made  the  sortie  from  co-operating  with  the  Russian 
army  outside  who  had  attacked  at  Balaklava.  The  latter 
were  endeavoring  to  intrench  themselves  at  the  little  village 
of  Inkerman,  lying  on  the  north  of  Sebastopol ;  but  the  stout 
resistance  they  met  with  from  the  allies  frustrated  their 
plans.  On  November  5th  the  Russians  made  another  grand 
attack  on  the  allies,  chiefly  on  the  British,  and  were  once 
more  splendidly  repulsed.  The  plateau  of  Inkerman  was  the 
principal  scene  of  the  struggle.  It  was  occupied  by  the 
Guards  and  a  few  British  regiments,  on  whom  fell,  until 
General  Bosquet  with  his  French  was  able  to  come  to  their 
assistance,  the  task  of  resisting  a  Russian  army.  This  was 
the  severest  and  the  fiercest  engagement  of  the  campaign. 
The  loss  to  the  English  was  2612,  of  whom  145  were  officers. 
The  French  lost  about  1700.  The  Russians  were  believed 
to  have  lost  12,000  men ;  but  at  no  time  could  any  clear  ac- 
count be  obtained  of  the  Russian  losses.  It  was  believed 
that  they  brought  a  force  of  50,000  men  to  the  attack. 
Inkerman  was  described  at  the  time  as  the  soldiers'  battle. 
Strategy,  it  was  said  everywhere,  there  was  none.  The  at- 
tack was  made  under  cover  of  a  dark  and  drizzling  mist. 
The  battle  was  fought  for  awhile  almost  absolutely  in  the 
dark.  There  was  hardly  any  attempt  to  direct  the  allies 
by  any  principles  of  scientific  warfare.  The  soldiers  fought 
stubbornly  a  series  of  hand-to-hand  fights,  and  we  are  enti- 
tled to  say  that  the  better  men  won  in  the  end.  We  fully 
admit  that  it  was  a  soldiers'  battle.  All  the  comment  we 
have  to  make  upon  the  epithet  is,  that  we  do  not  exactly 
know  which  of  the  engagements  fought  in  the  Crimea  was 
anything  but  a  soldiers'  battle.  Of  course,  with  the  soldiers 
we  take  the  officers.  A  battle  in  the  Crimea  with  which 
generalship  had  anything  particular  to  do  has  certainly  not 
come  under  the  notice  of  this  writer.  Mr.  Kinglake  tells 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  497 

that  at  Alma  Marshal  St.  Arnaud,  the  French  commander- 
in-chief,  addressing  General  Canrobert  and  Prince  Napoleon, 
said :  "  With  such  men  as  you  I  have  no  orders  to  give ;  I 
have  but  to  point  to  the  enemy."  This  seems  to  have  been 
the  general  principle  on  which  the  commanders  conducted 
the  campaign.  There  were  the  enemy's  forces — let  the  men 
go  at  them  any  way  they  could.  Nor  under  the  circum- 
stances could  anything  much  better  have  been  done.  When 
orders  were  given,  it  appeared  more  than  once  as  if  things 
would  have  gone  better  without  them.  The  soldier  won 
his  battle  always.  No  general  could  prevent  him  from 
doing  that. 

Meanwhile,  what  were  people  saying  in  England?  They 
were  indignantly  declaring  that  the  whole  campaign  was  a 
muddle.  It  was  evident  now  that  Sebastopol  was  not  go- 
ing to  fall  all  at  once;  it  was  evident, too, that  the  prepara- 
tions had  been  made  on  the  assumption  that  it  must  fall  at 
once.  To  make  the  disappointment  more  bitter  at  home,  the 
public  had  been  deceived  for  a  few  days  by  a  false  report  of 
the  taking  of  Sebastopol ;  and  the  disappointment  naturally 
increased  the  impatience  and  dissatisfaction  of  Englishmen. 
The  fleet  that  had  been  sent  out  to  the  Baltic  came  back 
without  having  accomplished  anything  in  particular;  and 
although  there  really  was  nothing  in  particular  that  it  could 
have  accomplished  under  the  circumstances,  yet  many  people 
were  as  angry  as  if  it  had  culpably  avowed  the  enemy  to  es- 
cape it  on  the  open  seas.  The  sailing  of  the  Baltic  fleet  had, 
indeed,  been  preceded  by  ceremonials  especially  calculated 
to  make  any  enterprise  ridiculous  which  failed  to  achieve 
some  startling  success.  It  was  put  under  the  command 
of  Sir  Charles  Napier,  a  brave  old  salt  of  the  fast-fading 
school  of  Smollett's  Commodore  Trunnion,  rough,  dashing, 
bull-headed,  likely  enough  to  succeed  where  sheer  force  and 
courage  could  win  victories,  but  wanting  in  all  the  intellect- 
ual qualities  of  a  commander,  and  endowed  with  a  violent 
tongue  and  an  almost  unmatched  indiscretion.  Sir  Charles 
Napier  was  a  member  of  a  family  famed  for  its  warriors; 
but  he  had  not  anything  like  the  capacity  of  his  cousin,  the 
other  Charles  Napier,  the  conqueror  of  Scinde,  or  the  intel- 
lect of  Sir  William  Napier,  the  historian  of  the  Peninsular 
War.  He  had  won  some  signal  and  surprising  successes  in 


498  A  HISTORY  OF  OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

the  Portuguese  civil  war  and  in  Syria;  all  under  conditions 
wholly  different,  and  with  an  enemy  wholly  different  from 
those  he  would  have  to  encounter  in  the  Baltic.  But  the 
voice  of  admiring  friends  was  tumultuously  raised  to  pre- 
dict splendid  things  for  him  before  his  fleet  had  left  its 
port,  and  he  himself  quite  forgot,  in  his  rough  self-confi- 
dence, the  difference  between  boasting  when  one  is  taking 

Zj  & 

off  his  armor  and  boasting  when  one  is  only  putting  it  on. 
His  friends  entertained  him  at  a  farewell  dinner  at  the  Re- 
form Club.  Lord  Palmerston  was  present,  and  Sir  James 
Graham,  the  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  and  a  great  deal 
of  exuberant  nonsense  was  talked.  Lord  Palmerston,  car- 
ried away  by  his  natural  bonhomie  and  his  high  animal 
spirits,  showered  the  most  extravagant  praises  upon  the 
gallant  admiral,  intermixed  with  jokes  which  set  the  com- 
pany laughing  consumedly,  but  which  read  by  the  outer 
public  next  day  seemed  unbecoming  preludes  to  an  expedi- 
tion that  was  to  be  part  of  a  great  war  and  of  terrible  na- 
tional sacrifices.  The  one  only  thing  that  could  have  ex- 
cused the  whole  performance  would  have  been  some  over- 
whelming success  on  the  part  of  him  who  was  its  hero. 
But  it  is  not  probable  that  a  Pundonald  or  even  a  Nelson 
could  have  done  much  in  the  Baltic  just  then ;  and  Napier 
was  not  a  Dundonald  or  a  Nelson.  The  Baltic  fleet  came 
home  safely  after  awhile,  its  commander  having  brought 
with  him  nothing  but  a  grievance  which  lasted  him  all 
the  remainder  of  his  life.  The  public  were  amazed,  scorn- 
ful, wrathful ;  they  began  to  think  that  they  were  destined 
to  see  nothing  but  failure  as  the  fruit  of  the  campaign. 
In  truth,  they  were  extravagantly  impatient.  Perhaps  they 
were  not  to  be  blamed.  Their  leaders,  who  ought  to  have 
known  better,  had  been  filling  them  with  the  idea  that  they 
had  nothing  to  do  but  to  sweep  the  enemy  from  sea  and 
land. 

The  temper  of  a  people  thus  stimulated  and  thus  disap- 
pointed is  almost  always  indiscriminating  and  unreasonable 
in  its  censure.  The  first  idea  is  to  find  a  victim.  The  vic- 
tim on  whom  the  anger  of  a  large  portion  of  the  public 
turned  in  this  instance  was  the  Prince  Consort.  The  most 
absurd  ideas,  the  most  cruel  and  baseless  calumnies,  were  in 
circulation  about  him.  He  was  accused  of  having,  out  of 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE   CRIMEA.  499 

some  inscrutable  motive,  made  use  of  all  his  secret  influence 
to  prevent  the  success  of  the  campaign.  He  was  charged 
with  being  in  a  conspiracy  with  Prussia,  with  Russia,  with 
no  one  knew  exactly  whom,  to  weaken  the  strength  of  Eng- 
land, and  secure  a  triumph  for  her  enemies.  Stories  were 
actually  told  at  one  time  of  his  having  been  arrested  for  high- 
treason.  He  had,  in  one  of  his  speeches  about  this  time, 
said  that  constitutional  government  was  under  a  heavy  trial, 
and  could  only  pass  triumphantly  through  it  if  the  country 
would  grant  its  confidence  to  her  Majesty's  Government. 
In  this  observation,  as  the  whole  context  of  the  speech  show- 
ed, the  Prince  was  only  explaining  that  the  Queen's  Govern- 
ment were  placed  at  a  disadvantage  in  the  carrying  on  of  a 
war,  as  compared  with  a  Government  like  that  of  the  Em- 
peror of  the  French,  who  could  act  of  his  own  arbitrary  will, 
without  check,  delay,  or  control  on  the  part  of  any  Parlia- 
mentary body.  But  the  speech  was  instantly  fastened  on 
as  illustrating  the  Prince's  settled  and  unconquerable  dislike 
of  all  constitutional  and  popular  principles  of  government. 
Those  who  opposed  the  Prince  had  not,  indeed,  been  waiting 
for  his  speech  at  the  Trinity  House  dinner  to  denounce  and 
condemn  him;  but  the  sentence  in  that  speech  to  which  ref- 
erence has  been  made  opened  upon  him  a  new  torrent  of 
hostile  criticism.  The  charges  which  sprang  of  this  heated 
and  unjust  temper  on  the  part  of  the  public  did  not, indeed, 
long  prevail  against  the  Prince  Consort.  When  once  the 
subject  came  to  be  taken  up  in  Parliament,  it  was  shown  al- 
most in  a  moment  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  ground 
or  excuse  for  any  of  the  absurd  surmises  and  cruel  suspicions 
which  had  been  creating  so  much  agitation.  The  agitation 
collapsed  in  a  moment.  But  while  it  lasted  it  was  both 
vehement  and  intense,  and  gave  much  pain  to  the  Prince, 
and  far  more  pain  still  to  the  Queen  his  wife. 

We  have  seen  more  lately,  and  on  a  larger  scale,  something 
like  the  phenomenon  of  that  time.  During  the  war  between 
France  and  Germany  the  people  of  Paris  went  nearly  wild 
with  the  idea  that  they  had  been  betrayed,  and  were  clamor- 
ous for  victims  to  punish  anywhere  or  anyhow.  To  many 
calm  Englishmen  this  seemed  monstrously  unreasonable  and 
unworthy;  and  the  French  people  received  from  English 
writers  many  grave  rebukes  and  wise  exhortations.  But 


A  HISTORY  OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

the  temper  of  the  English  public  at  one  period  of  the  Cri- 
mean War  was  becoming  very  like  that  which  set  Paris 
wild  during  the  disastrous  struggle  with  Germany.  The 
passions  of  peoples  are,  it  is  to  be  feared,  very  much  alike 
in  their  impulses  and  even  in  their  manifestations;  and  if 
England  during  the  Crimean  War  never  came  to  the  wild 

o  o 

condition  into  which  Paris  fell  during  the  later  struggle,  it 
is  perhaps  rather  because,  on  the  whole,  things  went  well 
with  England,  than  in  consequence  of  any  very  great  supe- 
riority of  Englishmen  in  judgment  and  self-restraint  over 
the  excitable  people  of  France.  Certainly  those  who  re- 
member what  we  may  call  the  dark  days  of  the  Crimean 
campaign,  when  disappointment  following  on  extravagant 
confidence  had  incited  popular  passion  to  call  for  some  vic- 
tim, will  find  themselves  slow  to  set  a  limit  to  the  lengths 
that  passion  might  have  reached  if  the  Russians  had  actual- 
ly been  successful  even  in  one  or  two  battles. 

The  winter  was  gloomy  at  home  as  well  as  abroad.  The 
news  constantly  arriving  from  the  Crimea  told  only  of  devas- 
tation caused  by  foes  far  more  formidable  than  the  Russians 
— sickness,  bad  weather,  bad  management.  The  Black  Sea 
was  swept  and  scourged  by  terrible  storms.  The  destruc- 
tion of  transport-ships  laden  with  winter  stores  for  our  men 
was  of  incalculable  injury  to  the  army.  Clothing,  blanket- 
ing, provisions,  hospital  necessaries  of  all  kinds,  were  de- 
stroyed in  vast  quantities.  The  loss  of  life  among  the  crews 
of  the  vessels  was  immense.  A  storm  was  nearly  as  disas- 
trous in  this  way  as  a  battle.  On  shore  the  sufferings  of  the 
army  were  unspeakable.  The  tents  were  torn  from  their  pegs 
and  blown  away.  The  officers  and  men  were  exposed  to 
the  bitter  cold  and  the  fierce  stormy  blasts.  Our  soldiers  had 
for  the  most  part  little  experience  or  even  idea  of  such  cold 
as  they  had  to  encounter  this  gloomy  winter.  The  inten- 
sity of  the  cold  was  so  great  that  no  one  might  dare  to 
touch  any  metal  substance  in  the  open  air  with  his  bare 
hand  under  penalty  of  leaving  the  skin  behind  him.  The 
hospitals  for  the  sick  and  wounded  at  Scutari  were  in  a 
wretchedly  disorganized  condition.  They  were,  for  the 
most  part,  in  an  absolutely  chaotic  condition  as  regards 
ai'rangement  and  supply.  In  some  instances  medical  stores 
were  left  to  decay  at  Varna,  or  were  found  lying  useless  in 


THE   INVASION   OF  THE   CRIMEA.  501 

the  holds  of  vessels  in  Balaklava  Bay,  which  were  needed 
for  the  wounded  at  Scutari.  The  medical  officers  were  able 
and  zealous  men ;  the  stores  were  provided  and  paid  for,  so 
far  as  our  Government  was  concerned ;  but  the  stores  were 
not  brought  to  the  medical  men.  These  had  their  hands 
all  but  idle,  their  eyes  and  souls  tortured  by  the  sight  of 
sufferings  which  they  were  unable  to  relieve  for  want  of 
the  commonest  appliances  of  the  hospital.  The  most  ex- 
traordinary instances  of  blunder  and  confusion  were  con- 
stantly coming  to  light.  Great  consignments  of  boots  ar- 
rived, and  were  found  to  be  all  for  the  left  foot.  Mules  for 
the  conveyance  of  stores  were  contracted  for  and  delivered, 
but  delivered  so  that  they  came  into  the  hands  of  the  Rus- 
sians, and  not  of  us.  Shameful  frauds  were  perpetrated  in 
the  instance  of  some  of  the  contracts  for  preserved  meat. 
"  One  man's  preserved  meat,"  exclaimed  Punch,  with  bitter 
humor,  "is  another  man's  poison."  The  evils  of  the  hos- 
pital disorganization  were  happily  made  a  means  of  bring- 
ing about  a  new  system  of  attending  to  the  sick  and  wound- 
ed in  war,  which  has  already  created  something  like  a  revo- 
lution in  the  manner  of  treating  the  victims  of  battle.  Mr. 
Sidney  Herbert,  horrified  at  the  way  in  which  things  were 
managed  in  Scutari  and  the  Crimea,  applied  to  a  distin- 
guished woman,  who  had  long  taken  a  deep  interest  in  hos- 
pital reform,  to  superintend  personally  the  nursing  of  the 
soldiers.  Miss  Florence  Nightingale  was  the  daughter  of  a 
wealthy  English  country  gentleman.  She  had  chosen  not  to 
pass  her  life  in  fashionable  or  aesthetic  inactivity,  and  had 
from  a  very  early  period  turned  her  attention  to  sanatory 
questions.  She  had  studied  nursing  as  a  science  and  a  sys- 
tem ;  and  had  made  herself  acquainted  with  the  working 
of  various  Continental  institutions ;  and  about  the  time 
when  the  war  broke  out  she  was  actually  engaged  in  reor- 
ganizing the  Sick  Governesses'  Institution  in  Harley  Street, 
London.  To  her  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert  turned.  He  offered 
her,  if  she  would  accept  the  task  he  proposed,  plenary  au- 
thority over  all  the  nurses,  and  an  unlimited  power  of  draw- 
ing on  the  Government  for  whatever  she  might  think  neces- 
sary to  the  success  of  the  undertaking.  Miss  Nightingale 
accepted  the  task,  and  went  out  to  Scutari,  accompanied  by 
some  women  of  rank  like  her  own,  and  a  trained  staff  of 


502  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

nurses.  They  speedily  reduced  chaos  into  order;  and  from 
the  time  of  their  landing  in  Scutari  there  was  at  least  one 
department  of  the  business  of  war  which  was  never  again  a 
subject  of  complaint.  The  spirit  of  the  chivalric  days  had 
been  restored  under  better  auspices  for  its  abiding  influence. 
Ladies  of  rank  once  more  devoted  themselves  to  the  service 
of  the  wounded,  and  the  end  was  come  of  the  Mrs.  Gamp 
and  Mrs.  Prig  type  of  nurse.  Sidney  Herbert,  in  his  letter 
to  Miss  Nightingale,  had  said  that  her  example,  if  she  accept- 
ed the  task  he  had  proposed,  would  "  multiply  the  good  to 
all  time."  These  words  proved  to  have  no  exaggeration 
in  them.  "VVe  have  never  seen  a  war  since  in  which  women 
of  education  and  of  genuine  devotion  have  not  given  them- 
selves up  to  the  task  of  caring  for  the  wounded.  The  Geneva 
Convention  and  the  bearing  of  the  Red  Cross  are  among 
the  results  of  Florence  Nightingale's  work  in  the  Crimea. 

But  the  siege  of  Sebastopol  was  meanwhile  dragging  heav- 
ily along ;  and  sometimes  it  was  not  quite  certain  which 
ought  to  be  called  the  besieged — the  Russians  in  the  city  or 
the  allies  encamped  in  sight  of  it.  During  some  months  the 
allied  armies  did  little  or  nothing.  The  commissariat  sys- 
tem and  the  land  transport  system  had  broken  down.  The 
armies  were  miserably  weakened  by  sickness.  Cholera  was 
ever  and  anon  raging  anew  among  our  men.  Horses  and 
mules  were  dying  of  cold  and  starvation.  The  roads  were 
only  deep  irregular  ruts  filled  with  mud ;  the  camp  was  a 
marsh;  the  tents  stood  often  in  pools  of  water;  the  men  had 
sometimes  no  beds  but  straw  dripping  with  wet,  and  hardly 
any  bed  coverings.  Our  unfortunate  Turkish  allies  were  in 
a  far  more  wretched  plight  than  even  we  ourselves.  The 
authorities,  who  ought  to  have  looked  after  them,  were  im- 
pervious to  the  criticisms  of  special  correspondents,  and  un- 
assailable by  Parliamentary  votes  of  censure.  A  condemna- 
tion of  the  latter  kind  was  hanging  over  our  Government. 
Lord  John  Russell  became  impressed  with  the  conviction 
that  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  was  not  strong  enough  for  the 
post  of  War  Minister,  and  he  wrote  to  Lord  Aberdeen  urg- 
ing that  the  War  Department  should  be  given  to  Lord  Palm- 
erston.  Lord  Aberdeen  replied  that  although  another  per- 
son might  have  been  a  better  choice  when  the  appointments 
were  made  in  the  first  instance,  yet  in  the  absence  of  any 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE   CRIMEA.  503 

proved  defect  or  alleged  incapacity  there  was  no  sufficient 
ground  for  making  a  kind  of  speculative  change.  Parlia- 
ment was  called  together  before  Christmas ;  and  after  the 
Christmas  recess  Mr.  Roebuck  gave  notice  that  he  would 
move  for  a  select  committee  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of 
the  army  before  Sebastopol,  and  into  the  conduct  of  those 
departments  of  the  Government  whose  duty  it  had  been  to 
minister  to  the  wants  of  the  army.  Lord  John  Russell  did 
not  believe  for  himself  that  the  motion  could  be  conscien- 
tiously resisted ;  but  as  it  necessarily  involved  a  censure 
upon  some  of  his  colleagues,  he  did  not  think  he  ought  to 
remain  longer  in  the  ministry,  and  he  therefore  resigned  his 
office.  The  sudden  resignation  of  the  leader  of  the  House 
of  Commons  was  a  death-blow  to  any  plans  of  resistance 
by  which  the  Government  might  otherwise  have  thought  of 
encountering  Mr.  Roebuck's  motion.  Lord  Palmerston,  al- 
though Lord  John  Russell's  course  was  a  marked  tribute  to 
his  own  capacity,  had  remonstrated  warmly  with  Russell  by 
letter  as  to  his  determination  to  resign.  "You  will  have 
the  appearance,"  he  said, "of  having  remained  in  office  aid- 
ing in  carrying  on  a  system,  of  which  you  disapprove  until 
driven  out  by  Roebuck's  announced  notice;  and  the  Gov- 
ernment will  have  the  appearance  of  self-condemnation  by 
flying  from  a  discussion  which  they  dare  not  face ;  while,  as 
regards  the  country,  the  action  of  the  executive  will  be  par- 
alyzed for  a  time  in  a  critical  moment  of  a  great  war,  with 
an  impending  negotiation,  and  we  shall  exhibit  to  the  world 
a  melancholy  spectacle  of  disorganization  among  our  politi- 
cal men  at  home  similar  to  that  which  has  prevailed  among 
our  military  men  abroad."  The  remonstrance,  however, 
came  too  late,  even  if  it  could  have  had  any  effect  at  any 
time.  Mr.  Roebuck's  motion  came  on,  and  was  resisted  with 
vigor  by  Lord  Palmerston  and  Mr.  Gladstone.  Lord  Palm- 
erston insisted  that  the  responsibility  ought  to  fall  not  on 
the  Duke  of  Newcastle  but  on  the  whole  cabinet;  and  with 
a  generosity  which  his  keenest  opponents  might  have  ad- 
mitted to  be  characteristic  of  him,  he  accepted  the  task  of 
defending  an  Administration  whose  chief  blame  was  in  the 
eyes  of  most  persons  that  they  had  not  given  the  control  of 
the  war  into  his  hands.  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  that  the  in- 
quiry sought  for  by  the  resolution  could  lead  to  nothing  but 


504  A  HISTORY   OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

"confusion  and  disturbance,  increased  disasters,  shame  at 
home  and  weakness  abroad ;  it  would  convey  no  consolation 
to  those  whom  you  seek  to  aid,  but  it  would  carry  malig- 
nant joy  to  the  hearts  of  the  enemies  of  England."  The 
House  of  Commons  was  not  to  be  moved  by  any  such  argu- 
ment or  appeal.  The  one  pervading  idea  was  that  England 
had  been  endangered  and  shamed  by  the  breakdown  of  her 
army  organization.  When  the  division  took  place,  305  mem- 
bers voted  for  Mr.  Roebuck's  motion,  and  only  148  against. 
The  majority  against  ministers  was  therefore  157.  Every 
one  knows  what  a  scene  usually  takes  place  when  a  minis- 
try is  defeated  in  the  House  of  Commons — cheering  again 
and  again  renewed,  counter-cheers  of  defiance,  wild  exulta- 
tion, vehement  indignation,  a  whole  whirlpool  of  various 
emotions  seething  in  that  little  hall  in  St.  Stephen's.  But 
this  time  there  was  no  such  outburst.  The  House  could 
hardly  realize  the  fact  that  the  ministry  of  all  the  talents 
had  been  thus  completely  and  ignominiously  defeated.  A 
dead  silence  followed  the  announcement  of  the  numbers. 
Then  there  was  a  half-breathless  murmur  of  amazement  and 
incredulity.  The  Speaker  repeated  the  numbers,  and  doubt 
was  over.  It  was  still  uncertain  how  the  House  would  ex- 
press its  feelings.  Suddenly  some  one  laughed.  The  sound 
gave  a  direction  and  a  relief  to  perplexed,  pent-up  emotion. 
Shouts  of  laughter  followed.  Not  merely  the  pledged  oppo- 
nents of  the  Government  laughed  ;  many  of  those  who  had 
voted  with  ministers  found  themselves  laughing  too.  It 
seemed  so  absurd,  so  incongruous,  this  way  of  disposing  of 
the  great  Coalition  Government.  Many  must  have  thought 
of  the  night  of  fierce  debate,  little  more  than  two  years  be- 
fore, when  Mr.  Disraeli,  then  on  the  verge  of  his  fall  from 
power,  and  realizing  fully  the  strength  of  the  combination 
against  him,  consoled  his  party  and  himself  for  the  immi- 
nent fatality  awaiting  them  by  the  defiant  words,  "I  know 
that  I  have  to  face  a  Coalition  ;  the  combination  may  be  suc- 
cessful. A  combination  has  before  this  been  successful ;  but 
coalitions,  though  they  may  be  successful,  have  always  found 
that  their  triumphs  have  been  brief.  This  I  know,  that  Eng- 
land does  not  love  coalitions."  Only  two  years  had  passed  and 
the  great  Coalition  had  fallen, overwhelmed  with  reproach  and 
popular  indignation,  and  amidst  sudden  shouts  of  laughter. 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE   WAR.  505 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

THE     CLOSE     OF    THE     WAR. 

ON  February  15th,  1855,  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to  his 
brother:  "A  month  ago,  if  any  man  had  asked  me  to  say 
what  was  one  of  the  most  improbable  events,  I  should  have 
said  my  being  Prime-minister.  Aberdeen  was  there ;  Derby 
was  head  of  one  great  party,  John  Russell  of  the  other,  and 
yet  iu  about  ten  days'  time  they  all  gave  way  like  straws 
before  the  wind ;  and  so  here  am  I,  writing  to  you  from 
Downing  Street,  as  First  Lord  of  the  Treasury." 

No  doubt  Lord  Palmerston  was  sincere  in  the  expression 
of  surprise  which  we  have  quoted ;  but  there  were  not  many 
other  men  in  the  country  who  felt  in  the  least  astonished  at 
the  turn  of  events  by  which  he  had  become  Prime-minister. 
Indeed,  it  had  long  become  apparent  to  almost  every  one 
that  his  assuming  that  place  was  only  a  question  of  time. 
The  country  was  in  that  mood  that  it  would  absolutely  have 
somebody  at  the  head  of  affairs  who  knew  his  own  mind  and 
saw  his  way  clearly  before  him.  When  the  Coalition  Min- 
istry broke  down,  Lord  Derby  was  invited  by  the  Queen  to 
form  a  Government.  He  tried,  and  failed.  He  did  all  in  his 
power  to  accomplish  the  task  with  which  the  Queen  had  in- 
trusted him.  He  invited  Lord  Palmerston  to  join  him,  and 
it  was  intimated  that  if  Palmerston  consented  Mr.  Disraeli 
would  waive  all  claim  to  the  leadership  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  in  order  that  Palmerston  should  have  that  place. 
Lord  Derby  also  offered,  through  Lord  Palmerston,  places  in 
his  Administration  to  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert. 
Palmerston  did  not  see  his  way  to  join  a  Derby  Administra- 
tion, and  without  him  Lord  Derby  could  not  go  on.  The 
Queen  then  sent  for  Lord  John  Russell ;  but  Russell's  late 
and  precipitate  retreat  from  his  office  had  discredited  him 
with  most  of  his  former  colleagues,  and  he  found  that  he 
could  not  get  a  Government  together.  Lord  Palmerston 
was  then,  to  use  his  own  phrase,  V inevitable.  There  was  not 

I.— 2'2 


506  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

much  change  in  the  personnel  of  the  ministry.  Lord  Aber- 
deen was  gone,  and  Lord  Palmerston  took  his  place ;  and 
Lord  Panmure,  who  had  formerly,  as  Fox  Maule,  administer- 
ed the  affairs  of  the  army,  succeeded  the  Duke  of  Newcastle. 
Lord  Panmure,  however,  combined  in  his  own  person  the 
functions,  up  to  that  time  absurdly  separated,  of  Secretary 
at  War  and  Secretary  for  War.  The  Secretary  at  War  un- 
der the  old  system  was  not  one  of  the  principal  Secretaries 
of  State.  He  was  merely  the  officer  by  whom  the  regular 
communication  was  kept  up  between  the  War-office  and  the 
ministry,  and  has  been  described  as  the  civil  officer  of  the 
army.  The  Secretary  for  War  was  commonly  intrusted  with 
the  colonial  department  as  well.  The  two  War-offices  were 
now  made  into  one.  It  was  hoped  that  by  this  change  great 
benefit  would  come  to  our  whole  army  system.  Lord  Palm- 
erston acted  energetically,  too,  in  sending  out  a  sanitary 
commission  to  the  Crimea,  and  a  commission  to  superintend 
the  commissariat,  a  department  that,  almost  more  than  any 
other,  had  broken  down.  Nothing  could  be  more  strenuous 
than  the  terms  in  which  Lord  Palmerston  recommended  the 
sanitary  commission  to  Lord  Raglan.  He  requested  that 
Lord  Raglan  would  give  the  commissioners  every  assist- 
ance in  his  power.  "  They  will,  of  coui'se,  be  opposed  and 
thwarted  by  the  medical  officers,  by  the  men  who  have 
charge  of  the  port  arrangements,  and  by  those  who  have  the 
cleaning  of  the  camp.  Their  mission  will  be  ridiculed,  and 
their  recommendations  and  directions  set  aside,  unless  en- 
forced by  the  peremptory  exercise  of  your  authority.  But 
that  authority  I  must  request  you  to  exert  in  the  most  per- 
emptory manner  for  the  immediate  and  exact  carrying  into 
execution  whatever  changes  of  arrangement  they  may  rec- 
ommend ;  for  these  are  matters  on  which  depend  the  health 
and  lives  of  many  hundreds  of  men,  I  may,  indeed,  say  of 
thousands."  Lord  Palmerston  was  strongly  pressed  by  some 
of  the  more  strenuous  Reformers  of  the  House.  Mr.  Layard, 
who  had  acquired  some  celebrity  before  in  a  very  different 
field — as  a  discoverer,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  ruins  of  Nineveh 
and  Babylon — was  energetic  and  incessant  in  his  attacks  on 
the  administration  of  the  war,  and  was  not  disposed  even 
now  to  give  the  new  Government  a  moment's  rest.  Mr.  Lay- 
ard was  a  man  of  a  certain  rough  ability,  immense  self-suf- 


THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  WAR.  507 

ficiency,  and  indomitable  egotism.  He  was  not  in  any  sense 
an  eloquent  speaker;  he  was  singularly  wanting  in  all  the 
graces  of  style  and  manner.  But  he  was  fluent,  he  was  vo- 
ciferous, he  never  seemed  to  have  a  moment's  doubt  on  any 
conceivable  question,  he  never  admitted  that  there  could 
by  any  possibility  be  two  sides  to  any  matter  of  discussion. 
He  did  really  know  a  great  deal  about  the  East  at  a  time 
when  the  habit  of  travelling  in  the  East  was  comparatively 
rare.  He  stamped  down  all  doubt  or  difference  of  view  with 
the  overbearing  dogmatism  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Touchwood, 

O  O  ' 

or  of  the  proverbial  man  who  has  been  there  and  ought  to 
know;  and  he  was  in  many  respects  admirably  fitted  to  be 
the  spokesman  of  all  those,  and  they  were  not  a  few,  who 
saw  that  things  had  been  going  wrong  without  exactly  see- 
ing why,  and  were  eager  that  something  should  be  done, 
although  they  did  not  clearly  know  what.  Lord  Palmer- 
ston  strove  to  induce  the  House  not  to  press  for  the 
appointment  of  the  committee  recommended  in  Mr.  Roe- 
buck's motion.  The  Government,  he  said,  would  make  the 
needful  inquiries  themselves.  He  reminded  the  House  of 
Richard  II. 's  offer  to  lead  the  men  of  the  fallen  Tyler's 
insurrection  himself;  and  in  the  same  spirit  he  offered,  on 
the  part  of  the  Government,  to  take  the  lead  in  every  nec- 
essary investigation.  Mr.  Roebuck,  however,  would  not 
give  way;  and  Lord  Palmerston  yielded  to  a  demand  which 
had,  undoubtedly,  the  support  of  a  vast  force  of  public  opin- 
ion. The  constant  argument  of  Mr.  Layard  had  some  sense 
in  it :  the  Government  now  in  office  was  very  much  like  the 
Government  in  which  the  House  had  declared  so  lately  that 
it  had  no  confidence.  It  could  hardly,  therefore,  be  expect- 
ed that  the  House  should  accept  its  existence  as  guarantee 
enough  that  everything  should  be  done  which  its  predeces- 
sor had  failed  to  do.  Lord  Palmerston  gave  way,  but  his 
unavoidable  concession  brought  on  a  new  ministerial  crisis. 
Sir  James  Graham,  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert 
declined  to  hold  office  any  longer.  They  had  opposed  the 
motion  for  an  inquiry  most  gravely  and  strenuously,  and 
they  would  not  lend  any  countenance  to  it  by  remaining  in 
office.  Sir  Charles  Wood  succeeded  Sir  James  Graham  as 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty ;  Lord  John  Russell  took  the 
place  of  Secretary  of  the  Colonies,  vacated  by  Sidney  Her- 


508  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

bert ;  and  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis  followed  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 

Meanwhile  new  negotiations  for  peace,  set  on  foot  under 
the  influence  of  Austria,  had  been  begun  at  Vienna,  and  Lord 
John  Russell  had  been  sent  there  to  represent  the  interests 
of  England.  The  Conference  opened  at  Vienna  under  cir- 
cumstances that  might  have  seemed  especially  favorable  to 
peace.  We  had  got  a  new  ally,  a  State  not,  indeed,  com- 
manding any  great  military  strength,  but  full  of  energy  and 
ambition,  and  representing  more  than  any  other,  perhaps,  the 
tendencies  of  liberalism  and  the  operation  of  the  compara- 
tively new  principle  of  the  rights  of  nationalities.  This  was 
the  little  kingdom  of  Sardinia,  whose  government  was  then 
under  the  control  of  one  of  the  master-spirits  of  modern  poli- 
tics; a  man  who  belonged  to  the  class  of  the  Riehelieus  and 
the  Orange  Williams — the  illustrious  Count  Cavour.  Sar- 
dinia, it  may  be  frankly  said,  did  not  come  into  the  alliance 
because  of  any  particular  sympathies  that  she  had  with  one 
side  or  the  other  of  the  quarrel  between  Russia  and  the 
Western  Powers.  She  went  into  the  war  in  order  that  she 
might  have  a  locus  standi  in  the  councils  of  Europe  from 
which  to  set  forth  her  grievances  against  Austria.  In  the 
marvellous  history  of  the  uprise  of  the  kingdom  of  Italy 
there  is  a  good  deal  over  which,  to  use  the  words  of  Carlyle, 
moralities  not  a  few  must  shriek  aloud.  It  would  not  be 
easy  to  defend  on  high  moral  principles  the  policy  which 
struck  into  a  war  without  any  particular  care  for  either  side 
of  the  controversy,  but  only  to  serve  an  ulterior  and  person- 
al, that  is  to  say,  national  purpose.  But,  regarding  the  poli- 
cy merely  by  the  light  of  its  results,  it  must  be  owned  that 
it  was  singularly  successful,  and  entirely  justified  the  expec- 
tations of  Cavour.  The  Crimean  War  laid  the  foundations 
of  the  kingdom  of  Italy. 

That  was  one  fact  calculated  to  inspire  hopes  of  a  peace. 
The  greater  the  number  and  strength  of  the  allies,  the  great- 
er, obviously,  the  pressure  upon  Russia  and  the  probability 
of  her  listening  to  reason.  But  there  was  another  event  of 
a  very  different  nature,  the  effect  of  which  seemed  at  first 
likely  to  be  all  in  favor  of  peace.  This  was  the  death  of  the 
man  whom  the  united  public  opinion  of  Europe  regarded  as 
the  author  of  the  war.  On  March  2d,  1855,  the  Emperor 


THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   WAR.  509 

Nicholas  of  Russia  died  of  pulmonary  apoplexy,  after  an  at- 
tack of  influenza.  In  other  days  it  would  have  been  said  he 
had  died  of  a  broken  heart.  Perhaps  the  description  would 
have  been  more  strictly  true  than  the  terms  of  the  medical 
report.  It  was  doubtless  the  effect  of  utter  disappointment, 
of  the  wreck  and  ruin  of  hopes  to  which  a  life's  ambition  had 
been  directed  and  a  life's  energy  dedicated,  which  left  that 
frame  of  adamant  open  to  the  sudden  dart  of  sickness.  One 
of  the  most  remarkable  illustrations  of  an  artist's  genius  de- 
voted to  a  political  subject  was  the  cartoon  which  appeared 
in  Punch,  and  which  was  called  "  General  Fevrier  turned 
Traitor."  The  Emperor  Nicholas  had  boasted  that  Russia 
had  two  generals  on  whom  she  could  always  rely,  General 
Janvier  and  General  Fevrier;  and  now  the  English  artist 
represented  General  February,  a  skeleton  in  Russian  uni- 
form, turning  traitor,  and  laying  his  bony  ice-cold  hand  on 
the  heart  of  the  Sovereign  and  betraying  him  to  the  tomb. 
But,  indeed,  it  was  not  General  February  alone  who  doomed 
Nicholas  to  death.  The  Czar  died  of  broken  hopes ;  of  the 
recklessness  that  comes  from  defeat  and  despair.  He  took 
no  precautions  against  cold  and  exposure;  he  treated  with 
a  magnanimous  disdain  the  remonstrances  of  his  physicians 
and  his  friends.  As  of  Max  Piccolomini  in  Schiller's  noble 
play,  so  of  him  :  men  whispered  that  he  wished  to  die.  The 
Alma  was  to  him  what  Austcrlitz  was  to  Pitt.  From  the 
moment  when  the  news  of  that  defeat  was  announced  to  him 
he  no  longer  seemed  to  have  hope  of  the  campaign.  He 
took  the  story  of  the  defeat  very  much  as  Lord  North  took 
the  surrender  of  Cornwallis — as  if  a  bullet  had  struck  him. 
Thenceforth  he  was  like  one  whom  the  old  Scotch  phrase 
would  describe  as  fey — one  who  moved,  spoke,  and  lived 
under  the  shadow  of  coming  death  until  the  death  came. 

The  news  of  the  sudden  death  of  the  Emperor  created  a 
profound  sensation  in  England.  Mr.  Bright,  at  Manchester, 
shortly  after  rebuked  what  he  considered  an  ignoble  levity 
in  the  manner  of  commenting  on  the  event  among  some 

~  O 

of  the  English  journals;  but  it  is  right  to  say  that,  on  the 
whole,  nothing  could  have  been  more  decorous  and  dignified 
than  the  manner  in  which  the  English  public  generally  re- 
ceived the  news  that  the  country's  great  enemy  was  no  more. 
At  first  there  was,  as  we  have  said,  a  common  impression  that 


510  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Nicholas's  son  and  successor,  Alexander  II.,  would  be  more 
anxious  to  make  peace  than  his  father  had  been.  But  this 
hope  was  soon  gone.  The  new  Czar  could  not  venture  to 
show  himself  to  his  people  in  a  less  patriotic  light  than  his 
predecessor.  The  prospects  of  the  allies  were  at  the  time 
remarkably  gloomy.  There  must  have  seemed  to  the  new 
Russian  Emperor  considerable  ground  for  the  hope  that  dis- 
ease, and  cold,  and  bad  management  would  do  more  harm  to 
the  army  of  England,  at  least,  than  any  Russian  general  could 
do.  The  Conference  at  Vienna  proved  a  failure,  and  even  in 
some  respects  a.  fiasco.  Lord  John  Russell,  sent  to  Vienna 
as  our  representative,  was  instructed  that  the  object  he  must 
hold  in  view  was  the  admission  of  Turkey  into  the  great 
family  of  European  States.  For  this  end  there  were  four 
principal  points  to  be  considered — the  condition  of  the  Dan- 
nbian  Principalities,  the  free  navigation  of  the  Danube,  the 
limitation  of  Russian  supremacy  in  the  Black  Sea,  and  the 
independence  of  the  Porte.  It  was  on  the  attempt  to  limit 
Russian  supremacy  in  the  Black  Sea  that  the  negotiations 
became  a  failure.  Russia  would  not  consent  to  any  proposal 
which  could  really  have  the  desired  effect.  She  would  agree 
to  an  arrangement  between  Turkey  and  herself,  but  this  was 
exactly  what  the  Western  Powers  were  determined  not  to 
allow.  She  declined  to  have  the  strength  of  her  navy  re- 
stricted; and  proposed  as  a  counter -resolution  that  the 
Straits  should  be  opened  to  the  war  flags  of  all  nations,  so 
that  if  Russia  were  strong  as  a  naval  Power  in  the  Black 
Sea,  other  Powers  might  be  just  as  strong  if  they  thought  fit. 
Lord  Palmerston,  in  a  letter  to  Lord  John  Russell,  dryly 
characterized  this  proposition,  involving  as  it  would  the 
maintenance  by  England  and  France  of  permanent  fleets  in 
the  Black  Sea  to  counterbalance  the  fleet  of  Russia,  as  a 
"  mauvaise  plaisanterie."  Lord  Palmerston,  indeed,  believed 
no  more  in  the  sincerity  of  Austria  throughout  all  these 
transactions  than  he  did  in  that  of  Russia.  The  Conference 
proved  a  total  failure,  and  in  its  failure  it  involved  a  good 
deal  of  the  reputation  of  Lord  John  Russell.  Like  the  French 
representative,  M.  Drouyn  de  Lhuys,Lord  John  Russell  had 
been  taken  by  the  proposals  of  Austria,  and  had  supported 
them  in  the  first  instance;  but  when  the  Government  at 
home  would  not  have  them,  he  was  still  induced  to  remain  a 


THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   WAR.  511 

member  of  the  Cabinet,  and  even  to  condemn  in  the  House 
of  Commons  the  recommendations  he  had  supported  at  Vi- 
enna. He  was  charged  by  Mr.  Disraeli  with  having  en- 
couraged the  Russian  pretensions  by  declaring  at  a  critical 
point  of  the  negotiations  that  he  was  disposed  to  favor  what- 
ever arrangement  would  best  preserve  the  honor  of  Russia. 
"What  has  the  representative  of  England,"  Mr.  Disraeli  in- 
dignantly asked, "to  do  with  the  honor  of  Russia?"  Lord 
John,  had  indeed,  a  fair  reply.  He  could  say  with  justice 
and  good-sense  that  no  settlement  was  likely  to  be  lasting 
which  simply  forced  conditions  upon  a  great  Power  like  Rus- 
sia without  taking  any  account  of  what  is  considered  among 
nations  to  be  her  honor.  But  he  was  not  able  to  give  any 
satisfactory  explanation  of  his  having  approved  the  condi- 
tions iu  Vienna  which  he  afterward  condemned  in  West- 
minster. He  explained  in  Parliament  that  he  did,  in  the  first 
instance,  regard  the  Austrian  propositions  as  containing  the 
possible  basis  of  a  satisfactory  and  lasting  peace ;  but  that, 
as  the  Government  would  not  hear  of  them,  he  had  rejected 
them  against  his  own  judgment;  and  that  he  had  afterward 
been  converted  to  the  opinion  of  his  colleagues  and  believed 
them  inadmissible  in  principle.  This  was  a  sort  of  explana- 
tion more  likely  to  alarm  than  to  reassure  the  public.  What 
manner  of  danger,  it  was  asked  on  all  sides,  may  we  not  be 
placed  in  when  our  representatives  do  not  know  their  own 
minds  as  to  proper  terms  of  peace  ;  when  they  have  no  opin- 
ion of  their  own  upon  the  subject,  but  are  loud  in  approval 
of  certain  conditions  one  day  which  they  are  equally  loud 
in  condemning  the  next  ?  There  was  a  general  impression 
throughout  England  that  some  of  our  statesmen  in  office 
had  never  been  sincerely  in  favor  of  the  war  from  the  first ; 
that  even  still  they  were  cold,  doubtful,  and  half-hearted 
about  it,  and  that  the  honor  of  the  country  was  not  safe  in 
such  hands.  The  popular  instinct,  whether  it  was  right  as 
to  facts  or  not,  was  perfectly  sound  as  to  inferences.  We 
may  honor,  in  many  instances  we  must  honor,  the  consci- 
entious scruples  of  a  public  man  who  distrusts  the  objects 
and  has  no  faith  in  the  results  of  some  war  in  which  his  peo- 
ple are  engaged.  But  such  a  man  has  no  business  in  the 
Government  which  has  the  conduct  of  the  war.  The  men 
who  are  to  carry  on  a  war  must  have  no  doubt  of  its  right- 


512  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

fulness  of  purpose,  and  must  not  be  eager  to  conclude  it  on 
any  terms.  In  the  very  interests  of  peace  itself  they  must 
be  resolute  to  carry  on  the  war  until  it  has  reached  the  end 
they  sought  for. 

Lord  John  Russell's  remaining  in  office  after  these  dis- 
closures was  practically  impossible.  Sir  E.  B.  Lytton  gave 
notice  of  a  direct  vote  of  censure  on  "the  minister  charged 
Avith  the  negotiations  at  Vienna."  But  Russell  anticipated 
the  certain  effect  of  a  vote  in  the  House  of  Commons  by 
resigning  his  office.  This  step,  at  least,  extricated  his  col- 
leagues from  any  share  in  the  censure,  although  the  recrim- 
inations that  passed  on  the  occasion  in  Parliament  were 
many  and  bitter.  The  vote  of  censure  was,  however,  with- 
drawn. Sir  William  Molesworth,  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished of  the  school  who  were  since  called  Philosophical 
Radicals,  succeeded  him  as  Colonial  Secretary ;  and  the 
ministry  carried  one  or  two  triumphant  votes  against  Mr. 
Disraeli,  Mr.  Roebuck,  and  other  opponents,  or  at  least  tin- 
friendly  critics.  Meanwhile  the  Emperor  of  the  French  and 
his  wife  had  paid  a  visit  to  London,  and  had  been  received 
with  considerable  enthusiasm.  The  Queen  seems  to  have 
been  very  favorably  impressed  by  the  Emperor.  She  sin- 
cerely admired  him,  and  believed  in  his  desire  to  maintain 
peace  as  far  as  possible,  and  to  do  his  best  for  the  promotion 
of  liberal  principles  and  sound  economic  doctrines  through- 
out Europe.  The  beauty  and  grace  of  the  Empress  like- 
wise greatly  won  over  Queen  Victoria.  The  Prince  Consort 
seems  to  have  been  less  impressed.  He  was,  indeed,  a  be- 
liever in  the  sincerity  and  good  disposition  of  the  Emperor, 
but  he  found  him  strangely  ignorant  on  most  subjects,  even 
the  modern  political  history  of  England  and  France.  Dur- 
ing the  visit  of  the  Royal  family  of  England  to  France,  and 
now  while  the  Emperor  and  Empress  were  in  London,  the 
same  impression  appears  to  have  been  left  on  the  mind  of 
the  Prince  Consort.  He  also  seems  to  have  noticed  a  cer- 
tain barrack- room  flavor  about  the  Emperor's  entourage 
which  was  not  agreeable  to  his  own  ideas  of  dignity  and  re- 
finement. The  Prince  Consort  appears  to  have  judged  the 
Emperor  almost  exactly  as  we  know  now  that  Prince  Bis- 
marck did  then,  and  as  impartial  opinion  has  judged  him 
everywhere  in  Europe  since  that  time. 


THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   WAR.  513 

The  operations  in  the  Crimea  were  renewed  with  some 
vigor.  The  English  army  lost  much  by  the  death  of  its 
brave  and  manly  commander- in -chief,  Lord  Raglan.  He 
was  succeeded  by  General  Simpson,  who  had  recently  been 
sent  out  to  the  Crimea  as  chief  of  the  staff,  and  whose  ad- 
ministration during  the  short  time  that  he  held  the  com- 
mand was  at  least  well  qualified  to  keep  Lord  Raglan's 
memory  green,  and  to  prevent  the  regret  for  his  death  from 
losing  any  of  its  keenness.  The  French  army  had  lost  its 
first  commander  long  before — the  versatile,  reckless,  brill- 
iant soldier  of  fortune,  St.  Arnaud,  whose  broken  health  had 
from  the  opening  of  the  campaign  prevented  him  from  dis- 
playing any  of  the  qualities  which  his  earlier  career  gave 
men  reason  to  look  for  under  his  command.  After  St.  Ar- 
naud's  death  the  command  was  transferred  for  awhile  to 
General  Canrobert,  who,  finding  himself  hardly  equal  to  the 
task,  resigned  it  in  favor  of  General  Pelissier.  The  Sardin- 
ian contingent  had  arrived,  and  had  given  admirable  proof 
of  its  courage  and  discipline.  On  August  16th,  1855,  the 
Russians,  under  General  Liprandi,  made  a  desperate  effort 
to  raise  the  siege  of  Sebastopol  by  an  attack  on  the  allied 
forces.  The  attack  was  skilfully  planned  during  the  night, 
and  was  made  in  great  strength.  The  French  divisions  had 
to  bear  the  principal  weight  of  the  attack ;  but  the  Sardin- 
ian contingent  also  had  a  prominent  place  in  the  resistance, 
and  bore  themselves  with  splendid  bravery  and  success. 
The  attempt  of  the  Russians  was  completely  foiled  ;  and  all 
Northern  Italy  was  thrown  into  wild  delight  by  the  news 
that  the  flag  of  Piedmont  had  been  carried  to  victory  over 
the  troops  of  one  great  European  Power,  and  side  by  side 
with  those  of  two  others.  The  unanimous  voice  of  the  coun- 
try now  approved  and  acclaimed  the  policy  of  Cavour, 
which  had  been  sanctioned  only  by  a  very  narrow  majority, 
had  been  denounced  from  all  sides  as  reckless  and  senseless, 
and  had  been  carried  out  in  the  face  of  the  most  tremen- 
dous difficulties.  It  was  the  first  great  illustration  of  Ca- 
vour's  habitual  policy  of  blended  audacity  and  cool,  far-see- 
ing judgment.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  suggestion  to 
send  Sardinian  troops  to  the  Crimea  did  not  originate  in 
Cavour's  own  busy  brain.  The  first  thought  of  it  came  up 
in  the  mind  of  a  woman,  Cavour's  niece.  The  great  states- 

22* 


514  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

man  was  struck  with  the  idea  from  the  moment  when  she 
suggested  it.  He  thought  over  it  deeply,  resolved  to  adopt 
it,  and  carried  it  to  triumphant  success. 

The  repulse  of  the  Tchernaya  was  a  heavy,  indeed  a  fatal, 
stroke  for  the  Russians.  The  siege  had  been  progressing 
for  some  time  with  considerable  activity.  The  French  had 
drawn  their  lines  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  besieged  city. 
The  Russians,  however,  had  also  been  throwing  up  fresh 
works,  which  brought  them  nearer  to  the  lines  of  the  allies, 
and  sometimes  made  the  latter  seem  as  if  they  were  the  be- 
sieged rather  than  the  besiegers.  The  Malakoff  tower  and 
the  Mamelon  battery  in  front  of  it  became  the  scenes  and 
the  objects  of  constant  struggle.  The  Russians  made  des- 
perate night  sorties  again  and  again,  and  were  always  re- 
pulsed. On  June  Yth  the  English  assaulted  the  quarries  in 
front  of  the  Redan,  and  the  French  attacked  the  Mamelon. 
The  attack  on  both  sides  was  successful;  but  it  was  follow- 
ed on  the  18th  of  the  sa.me  month  by  a  desperate  and  whol- 
ly unsuccessful  attack  on  the  Redan  and  Malakoff  batteries. 
There  was  some  misapprehension  on  the  side  of  the  French 
commander,  which  led  to  a  lack  of  precision  and  unity  in 
the  carrying  out  of  the  enterprise,  and  it  became,  therefore, 
a,  failure  on  the  part  of  both  the  allies.  A  pompous  and  ex- 
ulting address  was  issued  by  Prince  Gortschakoff,  in  which 
he  informed  the  Russian  army  that  the  enemy  had  been 
beaten,  driven  back  with  enormous  loss;  and  announced 
that  the  hour  was  approaching  "when  the  pride  of  the  ene- 
my will  be  lowered,  their  armies  swept  from  our  soil  like 
chaff  blown  away  by  the  wind." 

On  September  5th  the  allies  made  an  attack  almost  simul- 
taneously upon  the  Malakoff  and  the  Redan.  It  was  agreed 
that  as  soon  as  the  French  had  got  possession  of  the  Mala- 
koff the  English  should  attack  the  Redan,  the  hoisting  of 
the  French  flag  on  the  former  fort  to  be  the  signal  for  our 
men  to  move.  The  French  were  brilliantly  successful  in 
their  part  of  the  attack,  and  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour  from 
the  beginning  of  the  attempt  the  flag  of  the  empire  was 
floating  on  the  parapets.  The  English  then  at  once  ad- 
vanced upon  the  Redan ;  but  it  was  a  very  different  task 
from  that  which  the  French  had  had  to  undertake.  The 
French  were  near  the  Malakoff;  the  English  wore  very  far 


THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   WAR.  515 

away  from  the  Redan.  The  distance  our  soldiers  had  to 
traverse  left  them  almost  helplessly  exposed  to  the  Russian 
fire.  They  stormed  the  parapets  of  the  Redan  despite  all 
the  difficulties  of  their  attack;  but  they  were  not  able  to 
hold  the  place.  The  attacking  party  were  far  too  small  in 
numbers;  re-enforcements  did  not  come  in  time;  the  English 
held  their  own  for  an  hour  against  odds  that  might  have 
seemed  overwhelming;  but  it  was  simply  impossible  for 
them  to  establish  themselves  in  the  Redan,  and  the  remnant 
of  them  that  could  withdraw  had  to  retreat  to  the  trenches. 
It  was  only  the  old  story  of  the  war.  Superb  courage  and 
skill  of  officers  and  men ;  outrageously  bad  generalship. 
The  attack  might  have  been  renewed  that  day,  but  the  Eng- 
lish commander-in- chief,  General  Simpson,  declared  with 
naivete  that  the  trenches  were  too  crowded  for  him  to  do 
anything.  Thus  the  attack  failed  because  there  Avere  too 
few  men,  and  could  not  be  renewed  because  there  were  too 
many.  The  cautious  commander  resolved  to  make  another 
attempt  the  next  morning.  But  before  the  morrow  came 
there  was  nothing  to  attack.  The  Russians  withdrew  dur- 
ing the  night  from  the1  south  side  of  Sebastopol.  A  bridge 
of  boats  had  been  constructed  across  the  bay  to  connect  the 
north  and  the  south  sides  of  the  city,  and  across  this  bridge 
Prince  Gortschakoff  quietly  withdrew  his  troops.  The  bom- 
bardment kept  up  by  the  allies  had  been  so  terrible  and  so 
close  for  several  days,  and  their  long-range  guns  were  so  en- 
tirely superior  to  anything  possessed  by  or,  indeed,  known 
to  the  Russians,  that  the  defences  of  the  south  side  were  be- 
ing irreparably  destroyed.  The  Russian  general  felt  that  it 
would  be  impossible  for  him  to  hold  the  city  much  longer, 
and  that  to  remain  there  was  only  useless  waste  of  life. 
But,  as  he  said  in  his  own  despatch,  "  it  is  not  Sebastopol 
which  we  have  left  to  them,  but  the  burning  ruins  of  the 
town,  which  we  ourselves  set  fire  to,  having  maintained  the 
honor  of  the  defence  in  such  a  manner  that  our  great-grand- 
children may  recall  with  pride  the  remembrance  of  it  and 
send  it  on  to  all  posterity."  It  was  some  time  before  the  al- 
lies could  venture  to  enter  the  abandoned  city.  The  arsenals 
and  powder-magazines  were  exploding,  the  flames  were  burst- 
ing out  of  every  public  building  and  every  private  house. 
The  Russians  had  made  of  Sebastopol  another  Moscow. 


516  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

With  the  close  of  that  long  siege,  which  had  lasted  nearly 
a  year,  the  war  may  be  said  to  have  ended.  The  brilliant 
episode  of  Kars,  its  splendid  defence  and  its  final  surrender, 
was  brought  to  its  conclusion,  indeed,  after  the  fall  of  Se- 
bastopol ;  but,  although  it  naturally  attracted  peculiar  atten- 
tion in  this  country,  it  could  have  no  effect  on  the  actual 
fortunes  of  such  a  war.  Kars  was  defended  by  Colonel 
Fenwick  Williams,  an  English  officer,  who  had  been  sent, 
all  too  late,  to  reorganize  the  Turkish  forces  in  Armenia  after 
they  had  suffered  a  terrible  defeat  at  the  hands  of  the  Rus- 
sians. Never,  probably,  had  a  man  a  more  difficult  task 
than  that  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  Williams.  He  had  to  con- 
tend against  official  stupidity,  corruption,  delay ;  he  could 
get  nothing  done  without  having  first  to  remove  whole  moun- 
tains of  obstruction,  and  to  quicken  into  life  and  movement 
an  apathy  which  seemed  like  that  of  a  paralyzed  system. 
He  concentrated  his  efforts  at  last  upon  the  defence  of  Kars, 
and  he  held  the  place  against  overwhelming  Russian  forces, 
and  against  an  enemy  far  more  appalling,  starvation  itself! 
With  his  little  garrison  he  repelled  a  tremendous  attack  of 
the  Russian  army  under  General  Mouravieff,  in  a  battle  that 
lasted  nearly  seven  hours,  and  as  the  result  of  which  the 
Russians  left  on  the  field  more  than  five  thousand  dead.  He 
had  to  surrender  at  last  to  famine ;  but  the  very  articles 
of  surrender  to  which  the  conqueror  consented  became  the 
trophy  of  Williams  and  his  men.  The  garrison  were  allow- 
ed to  leave  the  place  with  all  the  honors  of  war ;  and,  "  as  a 
testimony  to  the  valorous  resistance  made  by  the  gai-rison 
of  Kars,  the  officers  of  all  ranks  are  to  keep  their  swords." 
Williams  and  his  English  companions — Colonel  Lake,  Major 
Teesdale,  Major  Thompson,  and  Dr.  Sand  with — had  done  as 
much  for  the  honor  of  their  country  at  the  close  of  the  war 
as  Butler  and  Nasmyth  had  done  at  its  opening.  The  cur- 
tain of  that  great  drama  rose  and  fell  upon  a  splendid  scene 
of  English  heroism. 

The  war  was  virtually  over.  Austria  had  been  exerting 
herself  throughout  its  progress  in  the  interests  of  peace,  and 
after  the  fall  of  Sebastopol  she  made  a  new  effort  with  greater 
success.  Two  of  the  belligerents  were,  indeed,  now  anxious 
to  be  out  of  the  struggle  almost  on  any  terms.  These  were 
France  and  Russia.  The  new  Emperor  of  Russia  was  not 


THE   CLOSE   OF   THE   WAR.  517 

a  man  personally  inclined  for  war;  nor  had  he  his  father's 
overbearing  and  indomitable  temper.  He  could  not  but  see 
that  his  father  had  greatly  overrated  the  military  strength 
and  resources  of  his  country.  He  had  accepted  the  war  only 
as  a  heritage  of  necessary  evil,  with  little  hope  of  any  good 
to  come  of  it  to  Russia;  and  he  welcomed  any  chance  of 
ending  it  on  fair  terms.  France,  or  at  least  her  Emperor, 
was  all  but  determined  to  get  back  again  into  peace.  If 
England  had  held  out,  it  is  highly  probable  that  she  would 
have  had  to  do  so  alone.  For  this,  indeed,  Lord  Palmerston 
was  fully  prepared  as  a  last  resource,  sooner  than  submit  to 
terms  which  he  considered  unsatisfactory.  He  said  so,  and 
lie  meant  it.  "  I  can  fancy,"  Lord  Palmerston  wrote  to  Lord 
Clarendon  in  his  bright,  good-humored  way,  "how  I  should 
be  hooted  in  the  House  of  Commons  if  I  were  to  get  up  and 
say  that  we  had  agreed  to  an  imperfect  and  unsatisfactory 
arrangement.  ...  I  had  better  beforehand  take  the  Chiltern 
Hundreds."  Lord  Palmerston,  however,  had  no  occasion  to 
take  the  Chiltern  Hundreds;  the  Congress  of  Paris  opened 
on  February  26th,  1 856,  and  on  March  30th  the  treaty  of 
peace  was  signed  by  the  plenipotentiaries  of  the  Great  Pow- 
ers. Prussia  had  been  admitted  to  the  Congress,  which 
therefore  represented  England,  France,  Austria,  Prussia,  Tur- 
key, and  Sardinia. 

The  treaty  began  by  declaring  that  Kars  was  to  be  re- 
stored to  the  Sultan,  and  that  Sebastopol  and  all  other 
places  taken  by  the  allies  were  to  be  given  back  to  Russia. 
The  Sublime  Porte  was  admitted  to  participate  in  all  the 
advantages  of  the  public  law  and  system  of  Europe.  The 
other  Powers  engaged  to  respect  the  independence  and  ter- 
ritorial integrity  of  Turkey.  They  guaranteed  in  common 
the  strict  observance  of  that  engagement,  and  announced 
that  they  would  in  consequence  consider  any  act  tending 
to  a  violation  of  it  as  a  question  of  general  interest.  The 
Sultan  issued  a  firman  for  ameliorating  the  condition  of  his 
Christian  subjects,  and  communicated  to  the  other  Powers 
the  purposes  of  the  firman  "  emanating  spontaneously  from 
his  sovereign  will."  No  right  of  interference,  it  was  dis- 
tinctly specified,  was  given  to  the  other  Powers  by  this 
concession  on  the  Sultan's  part.  The  article  of  the  treaty 
which  referred  to  the  Black  Sea  is  of  especial  importance. 


518  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

"The  Black  Sea  is  neutralized;  its  waters  and  its  ports, 
thrown  open  to  the  mercantile  marine  of  every  nation,  are 
formally  and  in  perpetuity  interdicted  to  the  flag  of  war, 
either  of  the  Powers  possessing  its  coasts  or  of  any  other 
Power,  with  the  exceptions  mentioned  in  articles  fourteen 
and  nineteen."  The  exceptions  only  reserved  the  right  of 
each  of  the  Powers  to  have  the  same  number  of  small  armed 
vessels  in  the  Black  Sea  to  act  as  a  sort  of  maritime  police 
and  to  protect  the  coasts.  The  Sultan  and  the  Emperor  en- 
gaged to  establish  and  maintain  no  military  or  maritime 
arsenals  in  that  sea.  The  navigation  of  the  Danube  was 
thrown  open.  In  exchange  for  the  towns  restored  to  him, 
and  in  order  more  fully  to  secure  the  navigation  of  the 
Danube,  the  Emperor  consented  to  a  certain  rectification 
of  his  frontier  in  Bessarabia,  the  territory  ceded  by  Russia 
to  be  annexed  to  Moldavia  under  the  suzerainty  of  the 
Porte.  Moldavia  and  Wallachia,  continuing  under  the  su- 
zerainty of  the  Sultan,  were  to  enjoy  all  the  privileges  and 
immunities  they  already  possessed  under  the  guarantee  of 
the  contracting  Powers,  but  with  no  separate  right  of  inter- 
vention in  their  affairs.  The  existing  position  of  Servia  was 
assured.  A  convention  respecting  the  Dardanelles  and  the 
Bosphorus  was  made  by  all  the  Powers.  By  this  conven- 
tion the  Sultan  maintained  the  ancient  rule  prohibiting 
ships  of  war  of  foreign  Powers  from  entering  the  Straits 
so  long  as  the  Porte  is  at  peace.  During  time  of  peace  the 
Sultan  engaged  to  admit  no  foreign  ships  of  war  into  the 
Bosphorus  or  the  Dardanelles.  The  Sultan  reserved  to  him- 
self the  right,  as  in  former  times,  of  delivering  firmans  of 
passage  for  light  vessels  under  the  flag  of  war  employed  in 
the  service  of  foreign  Powers;  that  is  to  say,  of  their  diplo- 
matic missions.  A  separate  convention  as  to  the  Black  Sea 
between  Russia  and  Turkey  agreed  that  the  contracting 
parties  should  have  in  that  sea  six  light  steam- vessels  of 
not  more  than  800  tons,  and  four  steam  or  sailing  vessels 
of  not  more  than  200  tons  each. 

Thus  the  controversies  about  the  Christian  provinces,  the 
Straits,  and  the  Black  Sea  were  believed  to  be  settled.  The 
great  central  business  of  the  Congress,  however,  was  to  as- 
sure the  independence  and  the  territorial  integrity  of  Turkey, 
now  admitted  to  a  place  in  the  family  of  European  States. 


THE   CLOSE   OF   THE  WAR.  519 

As  it  did  not  seem  clear  to  those  most  particularly  con- 
cerned in  bringing  about  this  result  that  the  arrangements 
adopted  in  full  congress  had  been  sufficient  to  guarantee 
Turkey  from  the  enemy  they  most  feared,  there  was  a  tri- 
partite treaty  afterward  agreed  to  between  England,  France, 
and  Austria.  This  document  bears  date  in  Paris,  April  15th, 
1856;  by  it  the  contracting  parties  guaranteed  jointly  and 
severally  the  independence  and  integrity  of  the  Ottoman 
empire,  and  declared  that  any  infraction  of  the  general  treaty 
of  March  30th  would  be  considered  by  them  as  casus  belli. 
It  is  probable  that  not  one  of  the  three  contracting  parties 
was  quite  sincere  in  the  making  of  this  treaty.  It  appears 
to  have  been  done,  at  the  instigation  of  Austria,  much  less 
for  the  sake  of  Turkey  than  in  order  that  she  might  have 
some  understanding  of  a  special  kind  with  some  of  the  Great 
Powers,  and  thus  avoid  the  semblance  of  isolation  which  she 
now  especially  dreaded,  having  Russia  to  fear  on  the  one 
side,  and  seeing  Italy  already  raising  its  head  on  the  other. 
England  did  not  particularly  care  about  the  tripartite  treaty, 
which  was  pressed  upon  her,  and  which  she  accepted  trust- 
ing that  she  might  never  have  to  act  upon  it;  and  France 
accepted  it  without  any  liking  for  it,  probably  without  the 
least  intention  of  ever  acting  on  it. 

The  Congress  was  also  the  means  of  bringing  about  a 
treaty  between  England  and  France  and  Sweden.  By  this 
engagement  Sweden  undertook  not  to  cede  to  Russia  any 
part  of  her  present  territories  or  any  rights  of  fishery;  and 
the  two  other  Powers  agreed  to  maintain  Sweden  by  force 
against  aggression. 

The  Congress  of  Paris  was  remarkable,  too,  for  the  fact 
that  the  plenipotentiaries  before  separating  came  to  an  agree- 
ment on  the  subject  of  the  right  of  search,  and  the  rules  gen- 
erally of  maritime  war.  They  agreed  to  the  four  following 
declarations :  "  First,  privateering  is  and  remains  abolished. 
Second,  the  neutral  flag  covers  enemies'  goods,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  contraband  of  war.  Third,  neutral  goods,  with 
the  exception  of  contraband  of  war,  are  not  liable  to  capture 
under  an  enemy's  flag.  Fourth,  blockades,  in  order  to  be 
binding,  must  be  effective ;  that  is  to  say,  maintained  by  a 
force  sufficient  really  to  prevent  access  to  the  enemy's  coast." 
At  the  opening  of  the  war  Great  Britain  had  already  virtu- 


520  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ally  given  up  the  claims  she  once  made  against  neutrals,  and 
which  were  indeed  untenable  in  the  face  of  modern  civiliza- 
tion. She  gladly  agreed,  therefore,  to  ratify,  so  far  as  her 
declaration  Avent,  the  doctrines  which  would  abolish  forever 
the  principle  upon  which  those  and  kindred  claims  once 
rested.  It  was  agreed,  however,  that  the  rules  adopted  at 
the  Congress  of  Paris  should  only  be  binding  on  those  States 
that  had  acceded  or  should  accede  to  them.  The  Govern- 
ment of  the  United  States  had  previously  invited  the  great 
European  Powers,  by  a  circular,  to  assent  to  the  broad  doc- 
trine that  free  ships  make  free  goods.  At  the  instance  of 
England,  it  was  answered  that  the  adoption  of  that  doctrine 
must  be  conditional  on  America's  renouncing  the  right  of 
privateering.  To  this  the  United  States  raised  some  diffi- 
culty, and  the  declarations  of  the  Congress  were,  therefore, 
made  without  America's  assenting  to  them. 

With  many  other  questions,  too,  the  Congress  of  Paris  oc- 
cupied itself.  At  the  instigation  of  Count  Cavour  the  con- 
dition of  Italy  was  brought  under  its  notice;  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  out  of  the  Congress,  and  the  part  that  Sar- 
dinia assumed  as  representative  of  Italian  nationality,  came 
the  great  succession  of  events  which  ended  in  the  establish- 
ment of  a  King  of  Italy  in  the  palace  of  the  Quirinal.  The 
adjustment  of  the  condition  of  the  Danubian  Principalities, 
too,  engaged  much  attention  and  discussion,  and  a  highly  in- 
genious arrangement  was  devised  for  the  purpose  of  keeping 
those  provinces  from  actual  union,  so  that  they  might  be  co- 
herent enough  to  act  as  a  rampart  against  Russia,  without 
being  so  coherent  as  to  cause  Austria  any  alarm  for  her  own 
somewhat  disjointed,  not  to  say  distracted,  political  system. 
All  these  artificial  and  complex  arrangements  presently  fell 
to  pieces,  and  the  Principalities  became  in  course  of  no  very 
long  time  an  independent  State  under  an  hereditary  prince. 
But  for  the  hour  it  was  hoped  that  the  independence  of  Tur- 
key and  the  restriction  of  Russia,  the  security  of  the  Chris- 
tian provinces,  the  neutrality  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  the  clos- 
ing of  the  Straits  against  war  vessels,  had  been  bought  by 
the  war. 

England  lost  some  twenty-four  thousand  men  in  the  war; 
of  whom  hardly  a  sixth  fell  in  battle  or  died  of  wounds. 
Cholera  and  other  diseases  gave  grim  account  of  the  rest., 


THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   WAR.  521 

Forty-one  millions  of  money  were  added  by  the  campaign 
to  the  national  debt.  Not  much,  it  will  be  seen,  was  there 
in  the  way  of  mere  military  glory  to  show  for  the  cost.  Our 
fleets  had  hardly  any  chance  of  making  their  power  felt. 
The  ships  of  the  allies  took  Bomarsund  in  the  Baltic,  and 
Kinburn  in  the  Black  Sea,  and  bombarded  several  places ; 
but  the  war  was  not  one  that  gave  a  chance  to  a  Nelson, 
even  if  a  Nelson  had  been  at  hand.  Among  the  accidental 
and  unpleasant  consequences  of  the  campaign  it  is  worth 
mentioning  the  quarrel  in  which  England  became  involved 
with  the  United  States  because  of  our  Foreign  Enlistment 
Act.  At  the  close  of  December,  1854,  Parliament  hurriedly 
passed  an  Act  authorizing  the  formation  of  a  Foreign  Legion 
for  service  in  the  war,  and  some  Swiss  and  Germans  were 
recruited  who  never  proved  of  the  slightest  service.  Prus- 
sia and  America  both  complained  that  the  zeal  of  our  re- 
cruiting functionaries  outran  the  limits  of  discretion  and  of 
law.  One  of  our  consuls  was  actually  put  on  trial  at  Co- 
logne ;  and  America  made  a  serious  complaint  of  the  enlist- 
ment of  her  citizens.  England  apologized ;  but  the  United 
States  were  out  of  temper,  and  insisted  on  sending  our  min- 
ister, Mr.  Crampton,  away  from  Washington,  and  some  little 
time  passed  before  the  friendly  relations  of  the  two  States 
were  completely  restored. 

So  the  Crimean  War  ended.  It  was  one  of  the  unlucky 
accidents  of  the  hour  tli.it  the  curtain  fell  in  the  Crimea 
upon  what  may  be  considered  a  check  to  the  arms  of  Eng- 
land. There  were  not  a  few  in  this  country  who  would 
gladly  have  seen  the  peace  negotiations  fail,  in  order  that 
England  might  thereby  have  an  opportunity  of  reasserting 
her  military  supremacy  in  the  eyes  of  Europe.  Never  dur- 
ing the  campaign,  nor  for  a  long  time  before  it,  had  England 
been  in  so  excellent  a  condition  for  war  as  she  was  when  the 
warlike  operations  suddenly  came  to  an  end.  The  campaign 
had,  indeed,  only  been  a  training-time  for  us  after  the  un- 
nerving relaxation  of  a  long  peace.  We  had  learned  some 
severe  lessons  from  it;  and  not  unnaturally  there  were  im- 
patient spirits  who  chafed  at  the  idea  of  England's  having 
no  opportunity  of  putting  these  lessons  to  account.  It  was 
but  a  mere  chance  that  prevented  us  from  accomplishing 
the  capture  of  the  Redan,  despite  the  very  serious  disadvan- 


522  A  HISTORY   OF  OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

tages  with  which  we  were  hampered  in  our  enterprise,  as 
compared  with  our  allies  and  their  simultaneous  operation. 
With  just  a  little  better  generalship  the  Redan  would  have 
been  taken;  as  it  was,  even  with  the  generalship  that  we 
had,  the  next  attempt  would  not  have  been  likely  to  fail. 
But  the  Russians  abandoned  Sebastopol,  and  our  principal 
ally  was  even  more  anxious  for  peace  than  the  enemy ;  and 
we  had  no  choice  but  to  accept  the  situation.  The  war  had 
never  been  popular  in  France.  It  had  never  had  even  that 
amount  of  popularity  which  the  French  people  accorded  to 
their  Emperor's  later  enterprise,  the  campaign  against  Aus- 
tria. Louis  Napoleon  had  had  all  he  wanted.  He  had 
been  received  into  the  society  of  European  sovereigns,  and 
he  had  made  what  the  French  public  were  taught  to  consid- 
er a  brilliant  campaign.  It  is  surprising  to  any  one  who 
looks  calmly  back  now  on  the  history  of  the  Crimean  War 
to  find  what  an  extravagant  amount  of  credit  the  French 
army  obtained  by  its  share  in  the  operations.  Even  in  this 
country  it  was  at  the  time  an  almost  universal  opinion  that 
the  French  succeeded  in  everything  they  tried;  that  their 
system  was  perfect ;  that  their  tactics  were  beyond  improve- 
ment; that  they  were  a  contrast  to  us  in  every  respect. 
Much  of  this  absurd  delusion  was  no  doubt  the  result  of  a 
condition  of  things  amonjj  us  which  no  reasonable  English- 

O  O  • 

man  would  exchange  for  all  the  imaginary  triumphs  that  a 
court  historiographer  ever  celebrated.  It  was  due  to  the 
fact  that  our  system  was  open  to  the  criticism  of  every  pen 
that  chose  to  assail  it.  Not  a  spot  in  our  military  organi- 
zation escaped  detection  and  exposure.  Every  detail  was 
keenly  criticised ;  every  weakness  was  laid  open  to  public 
observation.  We  invited  all  the  world  to  see  where  we 
were  failing,  and  what  were  the  causes  of  our  failure.  Our 
journals  did  the  work  for  the  military  system  of  England 
that  Matthew  Arnold  says  Goethe  did  for  the  political  and 
social  systems  of  Europe — struck  its  finger  upon  the  weak 
places,  "  and  said  thou  ailest  here  and  there."  While  the 
official  and  officious  journals  of  the  French  empire  were 
sounding  paeans  to  the  honor  of  the  Emperor  and  his  suc- 
cesses, to  his  generals,  his  officers,  his  commissariat,  his  trans- 
port service,  his  soldiers,  his  camp,  pioneers,  and  all,  our  lead- 
ing papers  of  all  shades  of  politics  were  only  occupied  in 


THE   CLOSE   OF   THE   WAR.  523 

pointing  out  defects,  and  blaming  those  who  did  not  instant- 
ly remedy  them.  Unpatriotic  conduct,  it  may  be  said.  Ay, 
truly,  if  the  conduct  of  the  doctor  be  unfriendly  when  he 
tells  that  we  have  the  symptoms  of  failing  health,  and  warns 
us  to  take  some  measures  for  rest  and  renovation.  Some  of 
the  criticisms  of  the  English  press  were  undoubtedly  inaccu- 
rate and  rash.  But  their  general  effect  was  bracing,  health- 
ful, successful.  Their  immediate  result  was  that  which  has 
already  been  indicated — to  leave  the  English  army  at  the 
close  of  the  campaign  far  better  able  to  undertake  prolonged 
and  serious  operations  of  war  than  it  had  been  at  any  time 
during  the  campaign's  continuance.  For  the  effect  of  the 
French  system  on  the  French  army  we  should  have  to  come 
down  a  little  later  in  history,  and  study  the  workings  of  Im- 
perialism as  they  displayed  themselves  in  the  confidence,  the 
surprises,  and  the  collapse  of  1870. 

Still,  there  was  a  feeling  of  disappointment  in  this  country 
at  the  close  of  the  war.  This  was  partly  due  to  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  manner  in  which  we  had  carried  on  the  cam- 
paign, and  partly  to  distrust  of  its  political  results.  Our 
soldiers  had  done  splendidly;  but  our  generals  and  our  sys- 
tem had  done  poorly  indeed.  Only  one  first-class  reputation 
of  a  military  order  had  come  out  of  the  war,  and  that  was 
by  the  common  consent  of  the  world  awarded  to  a  Russian 
— to  General  Todleben,  the  defender  of  Sebastopol.  No 
new  name  was  made  on  our  side  or  on  that  of  the  French; 
and  some  promising  or  traditional  reputations  were  shatter- 
ed. The  political  results  of  the  war  were  to  many  minds 
equally  unsatisfying.  We  had  gone  into  the  enterprise  for 
two  things  —  to  restrain  the  aggressive  and  aggrandizing 
spirit  of  Russia,  and  to  secure  the  integrity  and  indepen- 
dence of  Turkey  as  a  Power  capable  of  upholding  herself  with 
credit  among  the  States  of  Europe.  Events  which  happen- 
ed more  than  twenty  years  later  will  have  to  be  studied  be- 
fore any  one  can  form  a  satisfactory  opinion  as  to  the  degree 
of  success  which  attended  each  of  these  objects.  For  the 
present,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  there  was  not  among 
thoughtful  minds  at  the  time  a  very  strong  conviction  of 
success  either  way.  Lord  Aberdeen  had  been  modest  in  his 
estimate  of  what  the  war  would  do.  He  had  never  had  any 
heart  in  it,  and  he  was  not  disposed  to  exaggerate  its  be- 


524  A   HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

neficent  possibilities.  He  estimated  that  it  might  perhaps 
secure  peace  in  the  East  of  Europe  for  some  twenty -five 
years.  His  modest  expectation  was  prophetic.  Indeed,  it  a 
little  overshot  the  mark.  Twenty-two  years  after  the  close 
of  the  Crimean  campaign  Russia  and  Turkey  were  at  war 
asrain. 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

TUB    LITERATURE    OF   THE    REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY. 

THE  close  of  the  Crimean  War  is  a  great  landmark  in  the 
reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  This,  therefore,  is  a  convenient 
opportunity  to  cast  a  glance  back  upon  the  literary  achieve- 
ments of  a  period  so  markedly  divided  in  political  interest 
from  any  that  went  before  it.  The  reign  of  Queen  Victoria 
is  the  first  in  which  the  constitutional  and  Parliamentary 
system  of  government  came  fairly  and  completely  into  rec- 
ognition. It  is  also  the  reign  which  had  the  good  fortune 
to  witness  the  great  modern  development  in  all  that  relates 
to  practical  invention,  and  more  especially  in  the  application 
of  science  to  the  work  of  making  communication  rapid  be- 
tween men.  On  land  and  ocean,  in  air  and  under  the  sen, 
the  history  of  rapid  travel  and  rapid  interchange  of  message 
coincides  with  that  of  the  present  reign.  Such  a  reign 
ought  to  have  a  distinctive  literature.  So,  in  truth,  it  has. 
Of  course  it  is  somewhat  bold  to  predict  long  and  distinct 
renown  for  contemporaries  or  contemporary  schools.  But 
it  may,  perhaps,  be  assumed  without  any  undue  amount  of 
speculative  venturesomeness  that  the  age  of  Queen  Victoria 
will  stand  out  in  history  as  the  period  of  a  literature  as  dis- 
tinct from  others  as  the  age  of  Elizabeth  or  Anne ;  although 
not,  perhaps,  equal  in  greatness  to  the  latter,  and  far  indeed 
below  the  former.  At  the  opening  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign 
a  great  race  of  literary  men  had  come  to  a  close.  It  is  cu- 
rious to  note  how  sharply  and  completely  the  literature  of 
Victoria  separates  itself  from  that  of  the  era  whose  heroes 
were  Scott,  Byron,  and  Wordsworth.  Before  Queen  Vic- 
toria came  to  the  throne,  Scott,  Byron,  Coleridge,  and  Keats 
were  dead.  Wordsworth  lived,  indeed,  for  many  years  after; 
so  did  Southcy  and  Moore;  and  Savage  Landor  died  much 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       525 

later  still.  But  Wordsworth,  Southey,  Moore,  and  Landor 
had  completed  their  literary  work  before  Victoria  came  to 
the  throne.  Not  one  of  them  added  a  cubit  or  an  inch  to 
his  intellectual  stature  from  that  time ;  some  of  them  even 
did  work  which  distinctly  proved  that  their  day  was  done. 
A  new  and  fresh  breath  was  soon  after  breathed  into  litera- 
ture. Nothing,  perhaps,  is  more  remarkable  about  the  bet- 
ter literature  of  the  age  of  Queen  Victoria  than  its  complete 
severance  from  the  leadership  of  that  which  had  gone  before 
it,  and  its  evidence  of  a  fresh  and  genuine  inspiration.  It  is 
a  somewhat  curious  fact,  too,  very  convenient  for  the  pur- 
poses of  this  history,  that  the  literature  of  Queen  Victoria's 
time  thus  far  divides  itself  clearly  enough  into  two  parts. 
The  poets,  novelists,  and  historians  who  were  making  their 
fame  with  the  beginning  of  the  reign  had  done  all  their  best 
work  and  made  their  mark  before  these  later  years,  and  were 
followed  by  a  new  and  different  school,  drawing  inspiration 
from  wholly  different  sources,  and  challenging  comparison 
as  antagonists  rather  than  disciples. 

We  speak  now  only  of  literature.  In  science  the  most  re- 
markable developments  were  reserved  for  the  later  years  of 
the  reign.  We  use  the  words  "remarkable  developments" 
in  the  historical  rather  than  in  the  scientific  sense.  It 
would  be  hardly  possible  to  overrate  the  benefits  conferred 
upon  science  and  the  world  by  some  of  the  scientific  men 
who  made  the  best  part  of  their  fame  in  the  earlier  years  of 
the  reign.  Some  great  names  at  once  start  to  the  memory. 
We  think  of  Brewster,  the  experimental  philosopher,  who 
combined  in  so  extraordinary  a  degree  the  strictest  severi- 
ty of  scientific  argument  and  form  with  a  freedom  of  fancy 
and  imagination  which  lent  picturesqueness  to  all  his  illus- 
trations, and  invested  his  later  writings  especially  with  an  in- 
definable charm.  We  think  of  Michael  Faraday,  the  chem- 
ist and  electrician,  who  knew  so  well  how  to  reconcile  the 
boldest  researches  into  the  heights  and  deeps  of  science  with 
the  sincerest  spirit  of  faith  and  devotion ;  the  memory  of 
whose  delightful  improvisations  on  the  science  he  loved  to 
expound  must  remain  forever  with  all  who  had  the  privilege 
of  hearing  the  unrivalled  lecturer  deliver  his  annual  dis- 
courses at  the  Royal  Institution.  It  is  not  likely  that  the 
name  of  Sir  John  Herschel,  a  gifted  member  of  a  gifted  fam- 


526  A  HISTORY  OF  OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ily,  would  be  forgotten  by  any  one  taking  even  the  hastiest 
glance  at  the  science  of  our  time — a  family  of  whom  it  may 
truly  be  said,  as  the  German  prose-poet  says  of  his  dream- 
ing hero,  that  their  eyes  were  among  the  stars  and  their 
souls  in  the  blue  ether.  Richard  Owen's  is,  in  another  field 
of  knowledge,  a  great  renown.  Owen  has  been  called  the 
Cuvier  of  England  and  the  Newton  of  natural  history,  and 
there  cannot  be  any  doubt  that  his  researches  and  discov- 
eries as  an  anatomist  and  palaeontologist  have  marked  a  dis- 
tinct era  in  the  development  of  the  study  to  which  he  de- 
voted himself.  Hugh  Miller,  the  author  of  "  The  Old  Red 
Sandstone  "  and  "  The  Testimony  of  the  Rocks,"  the  devotee 
and  unfortunately  the  martyr  of  scientific  inquiry,  brought 
a  fresh  and  brilliant  literary  abilit)'-,  almost  as  untutored 
and  spontaneous  as  that  of  his  immortal  countryman,  Rob- 
ert Burns,  to  bear  on  the  exposition  of  the  studies  to  which 
he  literally  sacrificed  his  life.  If,  therefore,  we  say  that  the 
later  period  of  Queen  Victoria's  reign  is  more  remarkable  in 
science  than  the  former,  it  is  not  because  we  would  assert 
that  the  men  of  this  later  day  contributed  in  richer  measure 
to  the  development  of  human  knowledge,  and  especially  of 
practical  science,  than  those  of  the  earlier  time ;  but  it  was 
in  the  later  period  that  the  scientific  controversies  sprang 
up,  and  the  school  arose  which  will  be,  in  the  historian's 
sense,  most  closely  associated  with  the  epoch.  The  value 
of  the  labors  of  men  like  Owen  and  Faraday  and  Brewster 
is  often  to  be  appreciated  thoroughly  by  scientific  students 
alone.  What  they  have  done  is  to  be  recorded  in  the  his- 
tory of  science  rather  than  in  the  general  and  popular  his- 
tory of  a  day.  But  the  school  of  scientific  thought  which 
Darwin  founded,  and  in  which  Huxley  and  Tyndall  taught, 
is  the  subject  of  a  controversy  which  may  be  set  down  as 
memorable  in  the  history  of  the  world.  All  science  and  all 
common  life  accepted  with  gratitude  and  without  contest 
the  contributions  made  to  our  knowledge  by  Faraday  and 
Brewster;  but  the  theories  of  Darwin  divided  the  scientific 
world,  the  religious  world,  and  indeed  all  society,  into  two 
hostile  camps,  and  so  became  an  event  in  history  which  the 
historian  can  no  more  pass  over  than,  in  telling  of  the  growth 
of  the  United  States,  he  could  omit  any  mention  of  the 
great  Civil  War.  Even  in  dealing  with  the  growth  of  sci- 


LITERATURE  OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       527 

ence,  it  is  on  the  story  of  battles  that  the  attention  of  the 
outer  world  must,  to  the  end  of  time,  be  turned  with  the 
keenest  interest.  This  is,  one  might  almost  think,  a  scien- 
tific law  in  itself,  with  which  it  would  be  waste  of  time  to 
quarrel. 

The  earlier  part  of  the  reign  was  richer  in  literary  genius 
than  the  later  has  thus  far  been.  Of  course  the  dividing  line 
which  we  draw  is  loosely  drawn,  and  may  sometimes  appear 
to  be  capricious.  Some  of  those  who  won  their  fame  in  the 
earlier  part  continued  active  workers,  in  certain  instances 
steadily  adding  to  their  celebrity,  through  the  succeeding 
years.  The  figure  of  Thomas  Carlyle  is  familiar  still  to  all 
who  live  in  the  neighborhood  of  Chelsea.  It  was  late  in  the 
reign  of  Victoria  that  Stuart  Mill  came  out  for  the  first  time 
on  a  public  platform  in  London,  after  a  life  divided  between 
official  work  and  the  most  various  reading  and  study;  a  life 
divided,  too,  between  the  seclusion  of  Blackheath  and  the 
more  poetic  seclusion  of  Avignon,  among  the  nightingales 
Avhose  song  was  afterward  so  sweet  to  his  dying  ears.  He 
came,  strange  and  shy,  into  a  world  which  knew  him  only  in 
his  books,  and  to  which  the  gentle  and  grave  demeanor  of 
the  shrinking  and  worn  recluse  seemed  out  of  keeping  with 
the  fearless  brain  and  heart  which  his  career  as  a  thinker 
proved  him  to  have.  The  reign  had  run  for  forty  years  when 
Harriet  Martineau  was  taken  from  that  beautiful  and  ro- 
mantic home  in  the  bosom  of  the  Lake  country  to  Avhich  her 
celebrity  had  drawn  so  many  famous  visitors  for  so  long  a 
time.  The  renown  of  Dickens  began  with  the  reign,  and  his 
death  was  sadly  premature  when  he  died  in  his  quaint  and 
charming  home  at  Gad's  Hill,  in  the  country  of  Falstaff  and 
Prince  Hal,  some  thirty-three  years  after.  Mrs.  Browning 
passed  away  very  prematurely;  but  it  might  welLbe  con- 
tended that  the  fame,  or  at  least  the  popularity,  of  Robert 
Browning  belongs  to  this  later  part  of  the  reign,  even  though 
his  greatest  work  belongs  to  the  earlier.  The  author  of  the 
most  brilliant  and  vivid  book  of  travel  known  in  our  modern 
English,  "Eothen,"  made  a  sudden  renown  in  the  earlier  part 
of  the  reign,  and  achieved  a  new  and  a  different  sort  of  re- 
pute as  the  historian  of  the  Crimean  War  during  the  later 
part.  Still,  if  we  take  the  close  of  the  Crimean  War  as  an 
event  dividing  the  reign  thus  far  into  two  parts,  we  shall 


528  A  HISTORY   OF   OUK  OWN  TIMES. 

find  that  there  does  seem  a  tolerably  clear  division  between 
the  literature  of  the  two  periods.  We  have,  therefore,  put 
in  this  first  part  of  our  history  the  men  and  women  who  had 
distinctly  made  their  mark  in  these  former  years,  and  who 
would  have  been  famous  if  from  that  time  out  they  had  done 
nothing  more.  It  is  with  this  division  borne  in  mind  that 
we  describe  the  reign  as  more  remarkable  in  the  literature 
of  the  earlier  and  in  the  science  of  these  later  years.  It  is 
not  rash  to  say  that,  although  poets,  historians,  and  novel- 
ists of  celebrity  came  afterward,  and  may  come  yet,  the  lit- 
erature of  our  time  gave  its  measure,  as  the  French  phrase 
is,  in  that  earlier  period. 

Alike  in  its  earlier  passages  and  in  its  later  the  reign  is 
rich  in  historical  labors.  The  names  of  Grote,  Macaulay, 
and  Carlyle  occur  at  once  to  the  mind  when  we  survey  the 
former  period.  Mr.  Grote's  history  of  Greece  is,  indeed,  a 
monumental  piece  of  work.  It  has  all  that  patience  and  ex- 
haustive care  which  principally  mark  the  German  historians, 
and  it  has  an  earnestness  which  is  not  to  be  found  generally 
in  the  representatives  of  what  Carlyle  has  called  the  Dryas- 
dust school.  Grote  threw  himself  completely  into  the  life 
and  the  politics  of  Athens.  It  Was  said  of  him  with  some 
truth  that  he  entered  so  thoroughly  into  all  the  political 
life  of  Greece  as  to  become  now  and  then  the  partisan  of 
this  or  that  public  man.  His  own  practical  acquaintance 
with  politics  was  undoubtedly  of  great  service  to  him.  We 
have  all  grown  somewhat  tired  of  hearing  the  words  of 
Gibbon  quoted  in  which  he  tells  us  that  "the  discipline  and 
evolutions  of  a  modern  battalion  gave  me  a  clearer  notion 
of  the  phalanx  and  the  legion ;  and  the  captain  of  the  Hamp- 
shire Grenadiers  (the  reader  may  smile)  has  not  been  use- 
less to  the  historian  of  the  Roman  Empire."  Assuredly  the 
practical  knowledge  of  politics  which  Grote  acquired  during 
the  nine  or  ten  years  of  his  Parliamentary  career  Avas  of 
much  service  to  the  historian  of  Greece.  It  has  been  said, 
indeed,  of  him  that  he  never  could  quite  keep  from  regard- 
ing the  struggles  of  parties  in  Athens  as  exactly  illustrating 
the  principles  disputed  between  the  Liberals  and  the  Tories 
in  England.  It  does  not  seem  to  us,  however,  that  his  polit- 
ical career  affected  his  historical  studies  in  any  way  but  by 
throwing  greater  vitality  and  nervousness  into  his  descrip- 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGK      FIRST  SURVEY.       529 

tions  of  Athenian  controversies.  The  difference  between  a 
man  who  has  mingled  anywhere  in  the  active  life  of  politics, 
and  one  who  only  knows  that  life  from  books  and  the  talk 
of  others,  is  specially  likely  to  show  itself  in  such  a  study  as 
Grote's  history.  His  political  training  enabled  Grote  to  see 
in  the  statesmen  and  soldiers  of  the  Greek  peoples  men, 
and  not  trees,  walking.  It  taught  him  how  to  make  the  dry 
'bones  live.  Mr.  Grote  began  life  as  what  would  have  been 
called  in  later  years  a  Philosophical  Radical.  He  was  a 
close  friend  of  Stuart  Mill,  although  he  did  not  always  agree 
with  Mill  in  his  opinions.  During  his  Parliamentary  career 
he  devoted  himself,  for  the  most  part,  to  the  advocacy  of  the 
system  of  vote  by  ballot.  He  brought  forward  a  motion  on 
the  subject  every  session,  as  Mr.  Charles  Villiers  did  at  one 
time  for  the  repeal  of  the  Corn-laws.  He  only  gave  up  the 
House  of  Commons  in  order  that  he  might  be  free  to  com- 
plete his  great  history.  He  did  not  retain  all  his  radical 
opinions  to  the  end  of  his  life  so  thoroughly  as  Mill  did,  but 
owned  with  a  certain  regret  that  in  many  ways  his  views 
had  undergone  modification,  and  that  he  grew  less  and  less 
ardent  for  political  change,  less  hopeful,  we  may  suppose,  of 
the  amount  of  good  to  be  done  for  human  happiness  and 
virtue  by  the  spread  and  movement  of  what  are  now  called 
advanced  opinions.  It  must  be  owned  that  it  takes  a  very 
vigorous  and  elastic  mind  to  enable  a  man  to  resist  the 
growth  of  that  natural  and  physical  tendency  toward  con- 
servatism or  reaction  which  comes  with  advancing  years. 
It  is  as  well  for  society,  on  the  whole,  that  this  should  be  so, 
and  that  the  elders,  as  a  rule,  should  form  themselves  into  a 
guard  to  challenge  very  pertinaciously  all  the  eager  claims 
and  demands  for  change  made  by  hopeful  and  restless  youth. 
No  one  would  more  readily  have  admitted  the  advantage 
that  may  come  from  this  common  law  of  life  than  Grote's 
friend,  Mill ;  although  Mill  remained  to  the  close  of  his  ca- 
reer as  full  of  hope  in  the  movement  of  liberal  opinions  as 
he  had  been  in  his  boyhood ;  still,  to  quote  from  some  noble 
words  of  Schiller,  "  reverencing  as  a  man  the  dreams  of  his 
youth."  In  his  later  years  Grote  withdrew  from  all  connec- 
tion with  active  political  controversy,  and  was,  indeed,  curi- 
ously ignorant  of  the  very  bearings  of  some  of  the  greatest 
questions  around  the  settlement  of  which  the  passions  and 
I.— 23 


530  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

interests  of  another  hemisphere  were  brought  into  fierce  and 
vast  dispute. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  more  than  once  to  speak 
of  Macaulay,  the  great  Parliamentary  debater  and  states- 
man. It  is  the  less  necessary *to  say  much  of  him  as  a 
historian;  for  Macaulay  will  be  remembered  rather  as  a 
man  who  could  do  many  things  brilliantly  than  as  the  au- 
thor of  a  history.  Yet  Macaulay's  "History  of  England," 
whatever  its  defects,  is  surely  entitled  to  rank  as  a  great 
work.  We  do  not  know  whether  grave  scholars  will  regard 
it  as  to  the  honor  of  the  book  or  the  reverse,  that  it  was  by 
far  the  most  popular  historical  essay  ever  produced  by  an 
Englishman.  The  successive  volumes  of  Macaulay's  "His- 
tory of  England"  were  run  after  as  the  Waverley  Novels 
might  have  been  at  the  zenith  of  their  author's  fame.  Liv- 
ing England  talked  for  the  time  of  nothing  but  Macaulay's 
"  England."  Certainly  history  had  never  before  in  our 
country  been  treated  in  a  style  so  well  calculated  to  ren- 
der it  at  once  popular,  fascinating,  and  fashionable.  Every 
chapter  glittered  with  vivid  and  highly  colored  description. 
On  almost -every  page  was  found  some  sentence  of  glowing 
eloquence  or  gleaming  antithesis,  which  at  once  lent  itself 
to  citation  and  repetition.  Not  one  word  of  it  could  have 
failed  to  convey  its  meaning.  The  whole  stood  out  in  an 
atmosphere  clear,  bright,  and  incapable  of  misty  illusion  as 
that  of  a  Swiss  lake  in  summer.  No  shade  or  faint  haze 
of  a  doubt  appeared  anywhere.  The  admirer  of  Macaulay 
had  all  the  comfort  in  his  studies  that  a  votary  of  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church  may  have.  He  had  an  infallible  guide. 
He  had  no  need  to  vex  himself  with  doubt,  speculation,  or 
even  conjecture.  This  absolute  certainty  about  everything 
was,  beyond  question,  one  great  source  of  Macaulay's  popu- 
larity. That  resolute  conviction  which  readers  of  a  more 
intellectual  class  are  especially  inclined  to  distrust  has  the 
same  charm  for  the  ordinary  reader  that  it  has  for  children, 
Avho  never  care  to  hear  any  story  if  they  suppose  the  nar- 
rator does  not  know  all  about  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  render 
question  or  contradiction  impossible.  But  although  this 
was  one  of  the  causes  of  Macaulay's  popularity,  it  was  not 
the  most  substantial  cause.  The  brilliancy  of  his  style,  the 
variety  and  aptness  of  his  illustrations,  and  the  animated 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       531 

manner  in  which  lie  contrived  to  set  his  ideas  of  men,  places, 
and  events  before  the  reader — these  were  among  the  sources 
of  success  to  which  his  admirers  must  look  with  the  greatest 
satisfaction.  It  is  of  late  somewhat  the  fashion  to  disparage 
Macaulay.  He  was  a  popular  idol  so  long  that  in  the  natu- 
ral course  of  things  it  has  come  to  him  to  have  his  title  to 
worship,  or  even  to  faith,  very  generally  questioned.  To 
be  unreasonably  admired  by  one  generation  is  to  incur  the 
certainty  of  being  unreasonably  disparaged  by  the  next.  The 
tendency  of  late  is  to  assume  that  because  Macaulay  was 
brilliant  he  must  necessarily  be  superficial.  But  Macaulay 
was  not  superficial.  He  Avas  dogmatic ;  he  was  full  of  prej- 
udice ;  he  was  in  all  respects  a  better  advocate  than  judge; 
he  was  wanting  in  the  calm,  impartial  balancing  faculty 
which  a  historian  of  the  highest  class  ought  to  have;  but 
he  was  not  superficial.  No  man  could  make  out  a  better 
and  stronger  case  for  any  side  of  a  controversy  which  he 
was  led  to  espouse.  He  was  not  good  at  drawing  or  explain- 
ing complex  characters.  He  loved,  indeed,  to  picture  con- 
tradictory and  paradoxical  characters.  Nothing  delighted 
him  more  than  to  throw  off  an  animated  description  of  some 
great  person,  who  having  been  shown  in  the  first  instance 
to  possess  one  set  of  qualities  in  extreme  prominence,  was 
then  shown  to  have  a  set  of  exactly  antagonistic  qualities  in 
quite  equal  prominence.  This  was  not  describing  a  complex 
character.  It  was  merely  embodying  a  paradox.  It  was  to 
"  solder  close,"  as  Timon  of  Athens  says,  "  impossibilities  and 
make  them  kiss."  There  was  something  too  much  of  trick 
about  this,  although  it  was  often  done  with  so  much  power 
as  to  bewilder  the  better  judgment  of  the  calmest  reader. 
But  where  Macaulay  happened  to  be  right  in  his  view  of  a 
man  or  an  event,  he  made  his  convictions  clear  with  an  im- 
pressiveness  and  a  brilliancy  such  as  no  modern  writer  has 
surpassed.  The  world  owes  him  something  for  having  pro- 
tested by  precept  and  example  against  the  absurd  notion 
that  the  "  dignity  of  history  "  required  of  historians  to  be 
grave,  pompous,  and  dull.  He  was  not  a  Gibbon,  but  he 
wrote  with  all  Gibbon's  delight  in  the  picturesqueness  of  a 
subject,  and  Gibbon's  resolve  to  fascinate  as  well  as  to  in- 
struct his  readers.  Macaulay's  history  tries  too  much  to  be 
a  historical  portrait  gallery.  The  dangers  of  such  a  style 


532  A   HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

do  not  need  to  be  pointed  out.  They  are  amply  illustrated 
in  Macaulay's  sparkling  pages.  But  it  is  something  to  know 
that  their  splendid  qualities  are  far  more  conspicuous  still 
than  their  defects.  Perhaps  very  recent  readers  of  history, 
too,  may  feel  disposed  to  be  grateful  to  Macaulay  for  having 
written  without  any  profound  philosophical  theory  to  ex- 
pound. He  told  history  like  a  story.  He  warmed  up  as  he 
went  along,  and  grew  enamored,  as  a  rornancist  does,  of  this 
character  and  angry  with  that  other.  No  doubt  he  fre- 
quently thus  did  harm  to  the  trustworthiness  of  his  narra- 
tive where  it  had  to  deal  with  disputed  questions,  although 
lie  probably  enhanced  the  charms  of  his  animated  style.  But 
he  did  not  set  out  with  a  mission  to  expound  some  theory 
as  to  a  race  or  a  tendency,  and  therefore  pledged  beforehand 
to  bend  all  facts  of  the  physical,  the  political,  and  the  moral 
world  to  the  duty  of  bearing  witness  for  him,  and  proclaim- 
ing the  truth  of  his  message  to  mankind. 

Macaulay  was  not  exactly  what  the  Germans  would  call 
a  many-sided  man.  He  never  was  anything  but  the  one 
Macaulay  in  all  he  did  or  attempted.  But  he  did  a  great 
many  things  well.  Nothing  that  he  ever  attempted  was 
done  badly.  He  was  as  successful  in  the  composition  of  a 
pretty  valentine  for  a  little  girl  as  he  was  in  his  history,  his 
essays,  his  "Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,"  and  his  Parliamentary 
speeches.  In  everything  he  attempted  he  went  very  near  to 
that  success  which  true  genius  achieves.  In  everything  he 
just  fell  short  of  that  achievement.  But  he  so  nearly  at- 
tained it  that  the  reader  who  takes  np  one  of  Macaulay's 
books  or  speeches  for  the  first  time  is  almost  sure  to  believe, 
under  the  influence  of  the  instant  impression,  that  the  genu- 
\ie  inspiration  is  there.  Macaulay  is  understood  to  have  for 
a  long  time  thought  of  writing  a  romance.  If  he  had  done 
so,  we  may  feel  sure  that  many  intelligent  readers  would 
have  believed,  on  the  first  perusal  of  it,  that  it  was  almost 
on  a  level  with  Scott,  and  only  as  the  first  impression  gradu- 
ally faded,  and  they  came  to  read  it  over  again,  have  found 
out  that  Macaulay  was  not  a  Scott  in  fiction  any  more  than 
he  was  a  Burke  in  eloquence  or  a  Gibbon  in  history.  He 
filled  for  a  long  time  a  larger  space  in  the  public  mind  than 
any  other  literary  man  in  England,  and  his  style  greatly  af- 
fected literary  men.  But  his  influence  did  not  pierce  deeply 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   KEIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       533 

down  into  public  feeling  and  thought  as  that  of  one  or  tjvo 
other  men  of  the  same  period  undoubtedly  did,  and  does  still. 
He  did  not  impress  the  very  soul  of  English  feeling  as  Mr. 
Carlylc,  for  example,  has  done. 

No  influence  suffused  the  age  from  first  to  last  more  strong- 
ly than  that  of  Thomas  Carlyle.  England's  very  way  of 
thinking  was  at  one  time  profoundly  affected  by  Carlyle. 
He  introduced  the  English  people  to  the  great  German  au- 
thors, very  much  as  Lessing  had  introduced  the  Germans  to 
Shakspeare  and  the  old  English  ballads.  Carlyle  wrote  in 
a  style  which  was  so  little  like  that  ordinarily  accepted  as 
English,  that  the  best  thing  to  be  said  for  it  was  that  it  was 
not  exactly  German.  At  one  time  it  appeared  to  be  so  com- 
pletely moulded  on  that  of  Jean  Paul  Richter,  that  not  a  few 
persons  doubted  whether  the  new-comer  really  had  any  ideas 
of  his  own.  But  Carlyle  soon  proved  that  he  could  think 
for  himself;  and  he  very  often  proved  it  by  thinking  wrong. 
There  was  in  him  a  strong,  deep  vein  of  the  poetic.  Long 
after  he  had  evidently  settled  down  to  be  a  writer  of  prose 
and  nothing  else,  it  still  seemed  to  many  that  his  true  sphere 
was  poetry.  The  grim  seriousness  which  he  had  taken  from 
his  Scottish  birth  and  belongings  was  made  hardly  less  grim 
by  the  irony  which  continually  gleamed  or  scowled  through 
it.  Truth  and  force  were  the  deities  of  Carlyle's  especial 
worship.  "The  eternal  verities  "  sat  on  the  top  of  his  Olym- 
pus. To  act  out  the  truth  in  life,  and  make  others  act  it  out, 
would  require  some  force  more  strong,  ubiquitous,  and  pene- 
trating than  we  can  well  obtain  from  the  slow  deliberations 
of  an  ordinary  Parliament,  with  its  debates  and  divisions  and 
everlasting  formulas.  Therefore,  to  enforce  his  eternal  veri- 
ties, Carlyle  always  preached  up  and  yearned  for  the  strong 
man,  the  poem  in  action,  whom  the  world  in  our  day  had  not 
found,  and  perhaps  could  not  appreciate.  If  this  man  were 
found,  it  would  be  his  duty  and  his  privilege  to  drill  us  all  as 
in  some  vast  camp,  and  compel  us  to  do  the  right  thing  to  his 
dictation.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  this  preaching  of  the  di- 
vine right  offeree  had  a  serious  and  sometimes  a  very  detri- 
mental effect  upon  the  public  opinion  of  England.  It  degener- 
ated often  into  affectation,  alike  with  the  teacher  and  the  dis- 
ciples. But  the  influence  of  Carlyle  in  preaching  earnestness 
and  truth, in  art  and  letters  and  everything  else,  had  a  healthy 


534  A  HISTORY   OP   OUIl  OWN   TIMES. 

and  very  remarkable  effect  entirely  outside  the  regions  of 
the  moralist,  who  in  this  country  at  least  lias  always  taught 
the  same  lesson.  It  is  not  probable  that  individual  men 
were  made  much  more  truthful  in  England  by  Carlyle's  glo- 
rification of  the  eternal  verities  than  they  would  have  been 
without  it.  But  his  influence  on  letters  and  art  was  pecul- 
iar, and  was  not  evanescent.  Carlyle  is  distinctly  the  found- 
er of  a  school  of  history  and  a  school  of  art.  In  the  mean 
while  we  may  regard  him  simply  as  a  great  author,  and  treat 
his  books  as  literary  studies,  and  not  as  gospels.  Thus  re- 
garded, we  shall  find  that  he  writes  in  a  style  which  every 
sober  critic  would  feel  bound  to  condemn,  but  which  nev- 
ertheless the  soberest  critic  is  forced  continually,  despite  of 
himself  and  his  rules,  to  admire.  For  out  of  the  strano-c  iar- 

n       d 

gon  which  he  seems  to  have  deliberately  adopted,  Carlyle 
has  undoubtedly  constructed  a  wonderfully  expressive  me- 
dium in  which  to  speak  his  words  of  remonstrance  and  ad- 
monition. It  is  a  mannerism,  but.  a  mannerism  into  which 
a  great  deal  of  the  individuality  of  the  man  seems  to  have 
entered.  It  is  not  wholly  affectation  or  superficiality.  Car- 
lyle's own  soul  seems  to  speak  out  in  it  more  freely  and 
strenuously  than  it  would  in  the  ordinary  English  of  socie- 
ty and  literature.  No  tongue,  says  Richter,  is  eloquent  save 
in  its  own  language;  and  this  strange  language  which  he 

^  O        *  O  O  O 

has  made  for  himself  does  really  appear  to  be  the  native 
tongue  of  Carlyle's  powerful  and  melancholy  eloquence. 
Carlyle  is  endowed  with  a  marvellous  power  of  depicting 
stormy  scenes  and  rugged,  daring  natures.  At  times  strange, 
wild,  piercing  notes  of  the  pathetic  are  heard  through  his 
strenuous  and  fierce  bursts  of  eloquence,  like  the  wail  of  a 
clarion  thrilling  between  the  blasts  of  a  storm.  His  history 
of  the  French  Revolution  is  history  read  by  lightning.  Of 
this  remarkable  book  John  Stuart  Mill  supplied  the  princi- 
pal material ;  for  Mill  at  one  time  thought  of  writing  a  his- 
tory of  the  Revolution  himself,  but,  giving  up  the  idea,  placed 
the  materials  he  had  collected  at  the  service  of  Carlyle.  Car- 
lyle used  the  materials  in  his  own  way.  He  is  indebted  to 
no  one  for  his  method  of  making  up  his  history.  With  all 
its  defects,  the  book  is  one  of  the  very  finest  our  age  has 
produced.  Its  characters  stand  out  like  portraits  by  Rem- 
brandt. Its  crowds  live  and  move.  The  picture  of  Mira- 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       535 

beau  is  worthy  of  the  hand  of  the  great  German  poet  who 
gave  us  Wallenstein.  But  Carlyle's  style  has  introduced 
into  this  country  a  thoroughly  false  method  of  writing  his- 
tory. It  is  a  method  which  has  little  regard  for  the  "  dry 
light "  which  Bacon  approved.  It  works  under  the  varying 
glare  of  colored  lights.  Its  purpose  is  to  express  scorn  of 
one  set  of  ideas  and  men,  and  admiration  of  another.  Given 
the  man  we  admire,  then  all  his  doings  and  ways  must  be 
admirable;  and  the  historian  proceeds  to  work  this  princi- 
ple out.  Carlyle's  Mirabeau  is  as  truly  a  creature  of  ro- 
mance as  the  Monte  Christo  of  Dumas.  This  way  of  go- 
ing to  work  became  even  more  apparent,  as  the  mannerisms 
became  more  incessant,  in  Carlyle's  later  writings — in  the 
"  Frederick  the  Great,"  for  example.  The  reader  dares  not 
trust  such  history.  It  is  of  little  value  as  an  instructor  in 
the  lessons  of  the  times  and  events  it  deals  with.  It  only 
tells  us  what  Carlyle  thought  of  the  times  and  the  events, 
and  the  men  who  were  the  chief  actors  in  them.  Nor  does 
Carlyle  bequeath  many  new  ideas  to  the  world  which  he 
stirred  by  his  stormy  eloquence.  That  falsehood  cannot  pre- 
vail over  truth  in  the  end,  nor  simulacra  do  the  work  of  re- 
alities, is  not,  after  all,  a  lesson  which  earth  can  be  said  to 
have  waited  for  up  to  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  com- 
ing of  Carlyle ;  and  yet  it  would  be  hard  to  point  to  any 
other  philosophical  outcome  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  teaching.  His 
value  is  in  his  eloquence,  his  power,  his  passion,  and  pathos; 
his  stirring  and  life-like  pictures  of  human  character,  whether 
faithful  to  the  historical  originals  or  not;  and  the  vein  of 
poetry  which  runs  through  all  his  best  writings,  and  some- 
times makes  even  the  least  sympathetic  reader  believe  that 
he  has  to  do  with  a  genuine  poet. 

In  strongest  contrast  to  the  influence  of  Carlyle  may  be 
set  the  influence  of  Mill.  Except  where  the  professed  teach- 
ers of  religious  creeds  are  concerned,  there  can  be  fcmnd  no 
other  man  in  the  reign  of  Victoria  who  had  anything  like  the 
influence  over  English  thought  that  Mill  and  Carlyle  pos- 
sessed. Mill  was  a  devoted  believer  in  the  possibilities  of 
human  nature  and  of  liberty.  If  Rousseau  was  the  apostle 
of  affliction,  Mill  was  surely  the  apostle  of  freedom.  He  be- 
lieved that  human  society  might  be  brought  to  something 
not  far  removed  from  perfection  by  the  influence  of  educa- 


536*  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

tiou  and  of  freedom  acting  on  the  best  impulses  and  disci- 
plining the  emotions  of  men  and  women.  Mill  was  a  strange 
blending  of  political  economist  and  sentimentalist.  It  was 
not  altogether  in  humorous  exaggeration  that  somebody  said 
he  was  Adam  Smith  and  Petrarch  in  one.  The  curious  se- 
clusion in  which  he  was  brought  up  by  his  father,  the  won- 
derful discipline  of  study  to  which  in  his  very  infancy  he 
was  subjected,  would  have  made  something  strange  and 
striking  out  of  a  commonplace  nature;  and  Mill  was  in  any 
case  a  man  of  genius.  There  was  an  antique  simplicity  and 
purity  about  his  life  which  removed  him  altogether  from  the 
ways  of  ordinary  society.  But  the  defect  of  his  teaching  as 
an  ethical  guide  was  that  he  made  too  little  allowance  for 
the  influence  of  ordinary  society.  He  always  seemed  to  act 
on  the  principle  that  with  true  education  and  noble  example 
the  most  commonplace  men  could  be  persuaded  to  act  like 
heroes,  and  to  act  like  heroes  always.  The  great  service 
which  he  rendered  to  the  world  in  his  "Political  Economy" 
and  his  "System  of  Logic"  is  of  course  independent  of  his 
controverted  theories  and  teachings.  These  works  would, 
if  they  were  all  he  had  written,  place  him  in  the  very  front 
rank  of  English  thinkers  and  instructors.  But  these  only 
represent  half  of  his  influence  on  the  public  opinion  of  his 
time.  His  faith  in  the  principle  of  human  liberty  led  him  to 
originate  the  movement  for  what  is  called  the  emancipation 
of  women.  Opinions  will  doubtless  long  differ  as  to  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  movement,  but  there  can  be  no  possible  dif- 
ference of  judgment  as  to  the  power  and  fascination  of  Mill's 
advocacy  and  the  influence  he  exercised.  He  did  not  suc- 
ceed, in  his  admirable  essay  "  On  Liberty,"  in  establishing 
the  rule. or  principle  by  which  men  may  decide  between  the 
right  of  free  expression  of  opinion  and  the  right  of  authority 
to  ordain  silence.  Probably  no  precise  boundary  line  can 
ever  be  drawn;  and  in  this,  as  in  so  much  else,  law-makers 
and  peoples  must  be  content  with  a  compromise.  But  Mill's 
is  at  least  a  noble  plea  for  the  fullest  possible  liberty  of  ut- 
terance; and  he  has  probably  carried  the  argument  as  far  as 
it  ever  can  be  carried.  There  never  was  a  more  lucid  and 
candid  reasoner.  The  most  difficult  and  abstruse  questions 
became  clear  by  the  light  of  his  luminous  exposition.  Some- 
thing, too,  of  human  interest  and  sympathy  became  infused 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       537 

into  the  most  seemingly  arid  discussions  of  political  econ- 
omy by  the  virtue  of  his  emotional  and  half  poetic  nature. 
It  was  well  said  of  him  that  he  reconciled  political  economy 
with  human  feeling.  His  style  was  clear  as  light.  Mill,  said 
one  of  his  critics,  lives  in  light.  Sometimes  his  language 
rose  to  a  noble  and  dignified  eloquence;  here  and  there  are 
passages  of  a  grave,  keen  irony.  Into  the  questions  of  relig- 
ious belief  which  arise  in  connection  with  his  works  it  is  no 
part  of  our  business  to  enter;  but  it  may  be  remarked  that 
his  latest  writings  seem  to  show  that  his  views  were  under- 
going much  modification  in  his  closing  years.  His  oppo- 
nents would  have  allowed  as  readily  as  his  supporters  that 
no  man  could  have  been  more  sincerely  inspired  with  a  de- 
sire to  arrive  at  the  truth ;  and  that  none  could  be  more  res- 
olute to  follow  the  course  which  his  conscience  told  him  to 
be  right.  He  carried  this  resolute  principle  into  his  warm- 
est controversies,  and  it  was  often  remarked  that  he  usually 
began  by  stating  the  case  of  the  adversary  better  than  the 
adversary  could  have  done  it  for  himself.  Applying  to  his 
own  character  the  same  truthful  method  of  inquiry  which  he 
applied  to  others,  Mill  has  given  a  very  accurate  description 
of  one,  at  least,  of  the  qualities  by  which  he  was  able  to  ac- 
complish so  much.  He  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography  that 
he  had  from  an  early  period  considered  that  the  most  useful 
part  he  could  take  in  the  domain  of  thought  was  that  of  an 
interpreter  of  original  thinkers,  and  mediator  between  them 
and  the  public.  "I  had  always  a  humble  opinion  of  my  own 
powers  as  an  original  thinker,  except  in  abstract  science 
(logic,  metaphysics,  and  the  theoretic  principles  of  political 
economy  and  politics),  but  thought  myself  much  superior  to 
most  of  my  contemporaries  in  willingness  and  ability  to  learn 
from  everybody;  as  I  found  hardly  any  one  who  made  such 
a  point  of  examining  what  was  said  in  defence  of  all  opin- 
ions, however  new  or  however  old,  in  the  conviction  that 
even  if  they  were  errors  there  might  be  a  substratum  of  truth 
underneath  them,  and  that  in  any  case  the  discovery  of  what 
it  was  that  made  them  plausible  would  be  a  benefit  to 
truth."  This  was  not  assuredly  Mill's  greatest  merit,  but  it 
was,  perhaps,  his  most  peculiar  quality.  He  was  an  original 
thinker,  despite  his  own  sincere  disclaimer;  but  he  founded 
no  new  system.  He  could  be  trusted  to  examine  and  ex- 

23* 


588  A  HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

pound  any  system  with  the  most  perfect  fairness  and  can- 
dor; and,  even  where  it  was  least  in  harmony  with  his  own 
ideas,  to  do  the  fullest  justice  to  every  one  of  its  claims. 

Harriet  Martineau's  career  as  a  woman  of  letters  and  a 
teacher  began,  indeed,  before  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria,  but 
it  was  carried  on  almost  without  interruption  during  nearly 
forty  years  of  the  reign.  She  was  political  economist,  novel- 
ist, historian,  biographer,  and  journalist;  and  in  no  path  did 
she  fail  to  make  her  mark.  Few  women  could  have  turned 
to  the  occupations  of  a  political  writer  under  greater  phys- 
ical disadvantages;  and  no  man  in  this  line  of  life,  however 
well  furnished  by  nature  with  physical  and  intellectual  qual- 
ifications for  success,  could  have  done  better  work.  She 
wrote  some  exquisite  little  stories,  and  one  or  two  novels  of 
more  ambitious  character.  It  is  praise  enough  to  give  them 
when  we  say  that,  although  fiction  certainly  was  not  work 
for  which  she  was  most  especially  qualified,  yet  what  she 
did  seems  to  be  destined  to  live  and  hold  a  place  in  our  lit- 
erature. She  was,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  only  Englishwom- 
an who  ever  achieved  distinct  and  great  success  as  a  writer 
of  leading  articles  for  a  daily  newspaper.  Her  strong  preju- 
dices and  dislikes  prevent  her  from  being  always  regarded 
as  a  trustworthy  historian.  Her  "History  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  Peace" — for  it  may  be  regarded  as  wholly  hers,  al- 
though Charles  Knight  began  it — is  a  work  full  of  vigorous 
thought  and  clear  description,  with  here  and  there  passages 
of  genuine  eloquence.  But  it  is  marred  in  its  effect  as  a 
trustworthy  narrative  by  the  manner  in  which  the  authoress 
yields  here  and  there  to  inveterate  and  wholesale  dislikes; 
and  sometimes,  though  not  so  often  or  so  markedly,  to  an 
overwrought  hero-worship.  Miss  Martineau  had,  to  a  great 
extent,  an  essentially  masculine  mind.  She  was  often  re- 
proached with  being  nnfeminine;  and  assuredly  she  would 
have  been  surprised  to  hear  that  there  was  anything  woman- 
ish in  her  way  of  criticising  public  events  and  men.  Yet  in 
reading  her  "History"  one  is  sometimes  amused  to  find  that 
that  partisanship  which  is  commonly  set  down  as  a  specially 
feminine  quality  affects  her  estimate  of  a  statesman.  Hers 
is  not  by  any  means  the  Carlylean  way  of  starting  with  a 
theory  and  finding  all  virtue  and  glory  in  the  man  who 
seems  to  embody  it,  and  all  baseness  and  stupidity  in  his 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       539 

opponents.  But  when  she  takes  a  dislike  to  a  particular 
individual,  she  seems  to  assume  that  where  he  Avas  wrong 
lie  must  have  been  wrong  of  set  malign  purpose,  and  that 
where  he  chanced  to  be  in  the  right  it  was  in  mistake,  and 
in  despite  of  his  own  greater  inclination  to  be  in  the  wrong. 
It  is  fortunate  that  these  dislikes  are  not  many,  and  also 
that  they  soon  show  themselves,  and  therefore  cease  to  be 
seriously  misleading.  In  all  other  respects  the  book  well 
deserves  careful  study.  The  life  of  the  woman  is  a  study 
still  more  deeply  interesting.  Others  of  her  sex  there  were 
of  greater  genius,  even  in  her  own  time;  but  no  English- 
woman ever  followed  with  such  perseverance  and  success  a 
career  of  literary  and  political  labor. 

"The  blue-peter  has  long  been  flying  at  my  foremast,  and, 
now  that  I  am  in  my  ninety-second  j'ear,  I  must  soon  expect 
the  signal  for  sailing."  In  this  quaint  and  cheery  way  Mary 
Somerville,  many  years  after  the  period  at  which  we  have 
now  arrived  in  this  work,  described  her  condition  and  her 
quiet  waiting  for  death.  No  one  surely  could  have  better 
earned  the  right  to  die  by  the  labors  of  a  long  life  devoted 
to  the  education  and  the  improvement  of  her  kind.  Mary 
Somerville  has  probably  no  rival  among  women  as  a  scientif- 
ic scholar.  Her  summary  of  Laplace's  "Mecanique  Celeste," 
her  treatise  on  the  "Connection  of  the  Physical  Sciences," 
and  her  "Physical  Geography,"  would  suffice  to  place  any 
student,  man  or  woman,  in  the  foremost  rank  of  scientific  ex- 
pounders. The  "Physical  Geography"  is  the  only  one  of 
Mrs.  Somerville's  remarkable  works  which  was  published  in 
the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria;  but  the  publication  of  the  oth- 
er two  preceded  the  opening  of  the  reign  by  so  short  a  time, 
and  her  career  and  her  fame  so  entirely  belong  to  the  Vic- 
torian period,  that,  even  if  the  "Physical  Geography"  had 
never  been  published,  she  must  be  included  in  this  history. 
"I  was  intensely  ambitious,"  Mrs.  Somerville  says  of  herself 
in  her  earlier  days, "  to  excel  in  something,  for  I  felt  in  my 
own  breast  that  women  were  capable  of  taking  a  higher 
place  in  creation  than  that  assigned  to  them  in  my  early 
days,  which  was  very  low."  It  is  not  exaggeration  to  say 
that  Mrs.  Somerville  distinctly  raised  the  world's 'estimate 
of  woman's  capacity  for  the  severest  and  the  loftiest  scien- 
tific pursuits.  She  possessed  the  most  extraordinary  power 


540  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

of  concentration,  amounting  to  an  entire  absorption  in  the 
subject  which  she  happened  to  be  studying,  to  the  exclusion 
of  all  disturbing  sights  and  sounds.  She  had  in  a  supreme 
degree  that  which  Carlyle  calls  the  first  quality  of  genius, 
an  immense  capacity  for  taking  trouble.  She  had  also,  hap- 
pily for  herself,  an  immense  capacity  for  finding  enjoyment 
in  almost  everything:  in  new  places,  people,  and  thoughts; 
in  the  old  familiar  scenes  and  friends  and  associations.  Hers 
was  a  noble,  calm,  fully-rounded  life.  She  worked  as  stead- 
fastly and  as  eagerly  in  her  scientific  studies  as  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau  did  with  her  economics  and  her  politics;  but  she  had 
a  more  cheery,  less  sensitive,  less  eager  and  impatient  nature 
than  Harriet  Martineau.  She  was  able  to  pursue  her  most 
intricate  calculations  after  she  had  passed  her  ninetieth  year; 
and  one  of  her  chief  regrets  in  dying  was  that  she  should 
not  "  live  to  see  the  distance  of  the  earth  from  the  sun  de- 
termined by  the  transit  of  Venus,  and  the  source  of  the  most 
renowned  of  rivers,  the  discovery  of  which  will  immortalize 
the  name  of  Dr.  Livingstone." 

The  paths  of  the  two  poets  who  first  sprang  into  fame  in 
the  present  reign  are  strangely  remote  from  each  other. 
Mr.  Tennyson  and  Mr.  Browning  are  as  unlike  in  style  and 
choice  of  subject,  and  indeed  in  the  whole  spirit  of  their 
poetry,  ns  Wordsworth  and  Byron.  Mr.  Tennyson  deals 
with  incident  and  picturesque  form,  and  graceful  legend, 
and  with  so  much  of  doubt  and  thought  and  yearning  mel- 
ancholy as  would  belong  to  a  refined  and  cultured  intellect 
under  no  greater  stress  or  strain  than  the  ordinary  chances 
of  life  among  educated  Englishmen  might  be  expected  to 
impose.  He  has  revived  with  great  success  the  old  Arthu- 
rian legends,  and  made  them  a  part  of  the  living  literature  of 
England.  But  the  knights  and  ladies  whom  he  paints  are 
refined,  graceful,  noble,  without  roughness,  without  wild  or, 
at  all  events,  complex  and  distracting  passions.  It  may  per- 
haps be  said  that  Tennyson  has  taken  for  his  province  all 
the  beauty,  all  the  nobleness,  all  the  feeling  that  lie  near  to 
or  on  the  surface  of  life  and  of  nature.  His  object  might 
seem  to  be  that  which  Lessing  declared  the  true  object  of 
all  art,  "to  delight ;"  but  it  is  to  delight  in  a  somewhat  nar- 
rower sense  than  was  the  meaning  of  Lessing.  Beauty,  mel- 
ancholy, and  repose  arc  the  elements  of  Tennyson's  poetry. 


LITERATUKE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       541 

There  is  no  storm,  no  conflict,  no  complication.  Mr.  Brown- 
ing, on  the  other  hand,  delights  in  perplexed  problems  of 
character  and  life — in  studying  the  effects  of  strange  con- 
trasting forces  of  passion  coming  into  play  under  peculiar 
and  distracting  conditions.  All  that  lies  beneath  the  sur- 
face ;  all  that  is  out  of  the  common  track  of  emotion  ;  all 
that  is  possible,  that  is  poetically  conceivable,  but  that  the 
outer  air  and  the  daily  walks  of  life  never  sec,  this  is  what 
specially  attracts  Mr.  Browning.  In  Tennyson  a  knight  of 
King  Arthur's  mythical  court  has  the  emotions  of  a  pol- 
ished English  gentleman  of  our  day,  and  nothing  more.  Mr. 
Browning  would  prefer,  in  treating  of  a  polished  English 
gentleman  of  our  day,  to  exhibit  him  under  some  conditions 
•which  should  draw  out  in  him  all  the  strange  elementary 
passions  and  complications  of  emotion  that  lie  far  down  i:i 
deeps  below  the  surface  of  the  best  ordered  civilization. 
The  tendency  of  the  one  poet  is  naturally  to  fall  now  and 
then  into  the  sweetly  insipid;  of  the  other,  to  wander  away 
into  the  tangled  regions  of  the  grotesque.  It  is,  perhaps, 
only  natural  that  under  such  conditions  the  one  poet  should 
be  profoundly  concerned  for  beauty  of  form,  and  the  latter 
almost  absolutely  indifferent  to  it.  No  poet  has  more  fin- 
ished beauty  of  style  and  exquisite  charm  of  melody  than 
Tennyson.  None  certainly  can  be  more  often  wanting  in 
grace  of  form  and  delight  of  soft  sound  than  Mr.  Browning. 
There  are  many  passages  and  even  many  poems  of  Brown- 
ing which  show  that  the  poet  could  be  melodious  if  he 
would ;  but  he  seems  sometimes  as  if  he  took  a  positive  de- 
light in  perplexing  the  reader's  ear  with  harsh,  untuneful 
sounds.  Mr.  Browning  commonly  allows  the  study  of  the 
purely  psychological  to  absorb  too  much  of  his  moods  and 
of  his  genius.  It  has  a  fascination  for  him  which  he  is  seem- 
ingly unable  to  resist.  He  makes  of  his  poems  too  often 
mere  searchings  into  strange  deeps  of  human  character  and 
human  error.  He  seldom  abandons  himself  altogether  to 
the  inspiration  of  the  poet;  he  hardly  ever  deserves  the  defi- 
nition of  the  minstrel  given  in  Goethe's  ballad  who  "  sings 
but  as  the  song-bird  sings."  Moreover,  Mr.  Browning  has 
an  almost  morbid  taste  for  the  grotesque ;  he  is  not  unfre- 
quently  a  sort  of  poetic  Callot.  It  has  to  be  added  that  Mr. 
Browning  is  seldom  easy  to  understand,  and  that  there  are 


542  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR  OWN   TIMES. 

times  when  he  is  only  to  be  understood  at  the  expense  of  as 
much  thought  and  study  as  one  might  give  to  a  controvert- 
ed passage  in  an  ancient  author.  This  is  a  defect  of  art,  and 
a  very  serious  defect.  The  more  devoted  of  Mr.  Browning's 
admirers  will  tell  us,  no  doubt,  that  the  poet  is  not  bound  to 
supply  us  with  brains  as  well  as  poetry,  and  that  if  we  can- 
not understand  what  he  says  it  is  the  fault  simply  of  our 
stupidity.  But  an  ordinary  man  who  finds  that  he  can  un- 
derstand Shakspeare  and  Milton,  Dryden  and  Wordsworth, 
Byron  and  Keats  without  any  trouble,  may  surely  be  ex- 
cused if  he  does  not  set  down  his  difficulty  about  some  of 
Browning's  poems  wholly  to  the  account  of  his  own  dulness. 
It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  there  is  any  idea  so  subtle 
that  if  the  poet  can  actually  realize  it  in  his  own  mind  clear- 
ly for  himself,  the  English  language  will  not  be  found  capa- 
ble of  expressing  it  with  sufficient  clearness.  The  language 
has  been  made  to  do  this  for  the  most  refined  reasonings  of 
philosophical  schools,  for  transcendentalists  and  utilitarians, 
for  psychologists  and  metaphysicians.  No  intelligent  per- 
son feels  any  difficulty  in  understanding  what  Mill,  or  Her- 
bert Spencer,  or  Huxley  means;  and  it  can  hardly  be  said 
that  the  ideas  Mr.  Browning  desires  to  convey  to  his  readers 
are  more  difficult  of  exposition, than  some  of  those  which 
the  authors  we  name  have  contrived  to  set  out  with  a  white 
light  of  clearness  all  round  them.  The  plain  truth  is  that 
Mr.  Browning  is  a  great  poet,  in  spite  of  some  of  the  worst 
defects  that  ever  stood  between  a  poet  and  popularity.  He 
is  a  great  poet  by  virtue  of  his  commanding  genius,  his  fear- 
less imagination,  his  penetrating  pathos.  He  strikes  an  iron 
harp-string.  In  certain  of  his  moods  his  poetry  is  like  that 
of  the  terrible  lyre  in  the  weird  old  Scottish  ballad,  the  lyre 
that  was  made  of  the  murdered  maiden's  breastbone,  and 
which  told  its  fearful  story  in  tones  "that  would  melt  a 
heart  of  stone."  In  strength  and  depth  of  passion  and 
pathos,  in  wild  humor,  in  emotion  of  every  kind,  Mr.  Brown- 
ing is  much  superior  to  Mr.  Tennyson.  The  poet-laureate 
is  the  completer  man.  Mr.  Tennyson  is,  beyond  doubt,  the 
most  complete  of  the  poets  of  Queen  Victoria's  time.  No 
one  else  has  the  same  combination  of  melody,  beauty  of 
description,  culture,  and  intellectual  power.  He  has  sweet- 
ness and  strength  in  exquisite  combination.  If  a  just  balance 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       543 

of  poetic  powers  were  to  be  the  crown  of  a  poet,  then  un- 
doubtedly Mr.  Tennyson  must  be  proclaimed  the  greatest 
English  poet  of  our  time.  The  reader's  estimate  of  Brown- 
ing and  Tennyson  will  probably  be  decided  by  his  predilec- 
tion for  the  higher  effort  or  for  the  more  perfect  art.  Brown- 
ing's is  surely  the  higher  aim  in  poetic  art;  but  of  the  art 
which  he  essays  Tennyson  is  by  far  the  completer  master. 
Tennyson  has,  undoubtedly,  thrown  away  much  of  his  sweet- 
ness and  his  exquisite  grace  of  form  on  mere  triflings  and 
pretty  conceits;  and  perhaps  as  a  retribution  those  poems 
of  his  which  are  most  familiar  in  the  popular  mouth  are  just 
those  which  least  do  justice  to  his  genuine  strength  and  in- 
tellect. The  cheap  sentiment  of  "  Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere," 
the  yet  cheaper  pathos  of"  The  May  Queen,"  are  in  the  minds 
of  thousands  the  choicest  representation  of  the  genius  of  the 
poet  who  wrote  "In  Memoriam"  and  the  "Morte  d' Arthur." 
Mr.  Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  has  chosen  to  court  the 
approval  of  his  time  on  terms  of  such  disadvantage  as  an 
orator  might  who  insisted  in  addressing  an  assemblage  in 
some  tongue  which  they  but  imperfectly  understood.  It  is 
the  fault  of  Mr.  Browning  himself  if  he  has  for  his  only  au- 
dience and  admirers  men  and  women  of  culture,  and  misses 
altogether  that  broad  public  audience  to  which  most  poets 
have  chosen  to  sing,  and  which  all  true  poets,  one  would 
think,  must  desire  to  reach  with  their  song.  It  is,  on  the 
other  hand,  assuredly  Mr.  Tennyson's  fault  if  he  has  by  his 
too  frequent  condescension  to  the  drawing-room,  and  even 
the  young  ladies'  school,  made  men  and  women  of  cult- 
ure forget  for  the  moment  his  best  things,  and  credit  him 
with  no  higher  gift  than  that  of  singing  "virginibus  pueris- 
que."  One  quality  ought  to  be  mentioned  as  common  to 
these  two  poets  who  have  so  little  else  in  common.  They 
are  both  absolutely  faithful  to  nature  and  truth  in  their 
pictures  of  the  earth  and  its  scenes  and  seasons.  Almost  all 
the  great  poets  of  the  past  age,  even  including  Wordsworth 
himself,  were  now  and  then  content  to  generalize  nature ;  to 
take  some  things  for  granted  ;  to  use  their  memory,  or  the 
eyes  of  others,  rather  than  their  own  eyes,  Avhen  they  had  to 
describe  changes  on  leaf,  or  sky,  or  water.  It  is  the  charac- 
teristic of  Tennyson  and  Browning  that  they  deal  with  nat- 
ure in  a  spirit  of  the  most  faithful  loyalty.  Not  the  branch 


544  .        A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

of  a  tree,  nor  the  cry  of  a  bird,  nor  the  shifting  colors  on  sea 
or  sky  will  be  found  described  on  their  pages  otherwise  than 
as  the  eye  sees  for  itself  at  the  season  of  which  the  poet  tells. 
In  reading  Tennyson's  description  of  woodland  and  forest 
scenes  one  might  almost  fancy  that  he  can  catch  the  exact 
peculiarities  of  sound  in  the  rustling  and  moaning  of  each 
separate  tree.  In  some  of  Mr.  Browning's  pictures  of  Italian 
scenery  every  detail  is  so  perfect  that  many  a  one  journey- 
ing along  an  Italian  road  and  watching  the  little  mouse- 
colored  cattle  as  they  drink  at  the  stream,  may  for  the  mo- 
ment almost  feel  uncertain  whether  he  is  looking  on  a  page 
of  living  reality  or  recalling  to  memory  a  page  from  the 
author  of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book."  The  poets  seem  to 
have  returned  to  the  fresh  simplicity  of  a  far-distant  age  of 
poetry,  when  a  man  described  exactly  what  he  saw,  and  was 
put  to  describing  it  because  he  saw  it.  In  most  of  the  in- 
termediate times  a  poet  describes  because  some  other  poet 
lias  described  before,  and  has  said  that  in  nature  there  are 
such  and  such  beautiful  things  which  every  true  poet  must 
see,  and  is  bound  to  acknowledge  accordingly  in  his  verse. 

These  two  are  the  greatest  of  our  poets  in  the  earlier  part 
of  the  reign  ;  indeed,  in  the  reign  early  or  late  so  far.  But 
there  are  other  poets  also  of  whom  we  must  take  account. 
Mrs.  Browning  has  often  been  described  as  the  greatest  poet- 
ess of  whom  we  know  anything  since  Sappho.  This  descrip- 
tion, however,  seems  to  carry  with  it  a  much  higher  degree 
of  praise  than  it  really  bears.  It  has  to  be  remembered  that 
there  is  no  great  poetess  of  whom  we  know  anything  from 
the  time  of  Sappho  to  that  of  Mrs.  Browning.  In  England 
we  have  hardly  had  any  woman  but  Mrs.  Browning  alone 
who  really  deserves  to  rank  with  poets.  She  takes  a  place 
altogether  different  from  that  of  any  Mrs.  Hemans,  or  such 
singer  of  sweet,  mild,  and  innocent  note.  Mrs.  Browning 
would  rank  bighly  among  poets  without  any  allowance  be- 
ing claimed  for  her  sex.  But  estimated  in  this  way,  which 
assuredly  she  would  have  chosen  for  herself,  she  can  hardly 
be  admitted  to  stand  with  the  foremost  even  of  our  modern 
day.  She  is  one  of  the  most  sympathetic  of  poets.  She 
speaks  to  the  hearts  of  numbers  of  readers  who  think  Ten- 
nyson all  too  sweet,  smooth,  and  trivial,  and  Robert  Brown- 
ing harsh  and  rugged.  She  speaks  especially  to  the  emo- 


LITERATURE   OF  THE  REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       545 

tional  in  woman.  In  all  moods  when  men  or  women  are 
distracted  by  the  bewildering  conditions  of  life,  when  they 
feel  themselves  alternately  dazzled  by  its  possibilities  and 
baffled  by  its  limitations,  the  poems  of  Elizabeth  Browning 
ought  to  find  sympathetic  ears.  But  the  poems  are  not  the 
highest  which  merely  appeal  to  our  own  moods  and  echo  our 
own  plaints  ;  and  there  was  not  much  of  creative  genius  in 
Mrs.  Browning.  Her  poems  are  often  but  a  prolonged  sob  ; 
a  burst  of  almost  hysterical  remonstrance  or  entreaty.  It 
must  be  owned,  however,  that  the  egotism  of  emotion  has 
seldom  found  such  exquisite  form  of  outpouring  as  in  her 
so-called  "Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  ;"  and  that  what  the 
phraseology  of  a  school  would  call  the  emotion  of"  altruism  " 
has  rarely  been  given  forth  in  tones  of  such  piercing  pathos 
as  in  "The  Cry  of  the  Children." 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  reputation  was  made  before  this 
earlier  period  had  closed.  He  is  a  maker  of  such  exquisite 
and  thoughtful  verse  that  it  is  hard  sometimes  to  question 
his  title  to  be  considered  a  genuine  poet.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  likely  that  the  very  grace  and  culture  and  thoughtful- 
ness  of  his  style  inspire  in  many  the  first  doubt  of  his  claim 
to  the  name  of  poet.  Where  the  art  is  evident  and  elabo- 
rate, we  are  all  too  apt  to  assume  that  it  is  all  art  and  not 
genius.  Mr.  Arnold  is  a  sort  of  miniature  Goethe ;  AVC  do 
not  know  that  his  most  ardent  admirers  could  demand  a 
higher  praise  for  him,  while  it  is  probable  that  the  descrip- 
tion will  suggest  exactly  the  intellectual  peculiarities  which 
lead  so  many  to  deny  him  a  place  with  the  really  inspired 
singers  of  his  day.  Of  the  three  men  whom  we  have  named, 
we  should  be  inclined  to  say  that  Mr.  Arnold  made  the  very 
most  of  his  powers,  and  Mr.  Browning  the  very  least.  Mr. 
Arnold  is  a  critic  as  well  as  a  poet :  there  are  many  who  rel- 
ish him  more  in  the  critic  than  in  the  poet.  In  literary  crit- 
icism his  judgment  is  refined,  and  his  aims  are  always  high 
if  his  range  be  not  very  wide;  in  politics  and  theology  he  is 
somewhat  apt  to  be  at  once  fastidious  and  fantastic. 

The  "Song  of  the  Shirt"  would  give  Thomas  Hood  a  tech- 
nical right,  if  he  had  none  other,  to  be  classed  as  a  poet  of 
the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  The  "Song  of  the  Shirt"  was 
published  in  Punch  when  the  reign  was  well  on ;  and  after 
it  appeared  "  The  Bridge  of  Sighs ;"  and  no  two  of  Hood's 


546  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

poems  have  done  more  to  make  him  famous.  He  Mras  a 
genuine,  though  not  a  great  poet,  in  whom  humor  was  most 
properly  to  be  defined  as  Thackeray  has  defined  it  —  the 
blending  of  love  and  wit.  The  "  Song  of  the  Shirt "  and  the 
"Bridge  of  Sighs"  made  themselves  a  kind  of  monumental 
place  in  English  sympathies.  The  "Plea  of  the  Midsummer 
Fairies  "  was  written  several  years  before.  It  alone  would 
have  made  for  its  author  a  reputation.  The  ballad  of  "  Fail- 
Inez"  is  almost  perfect  in  its  way.  The  name  of  Sir  Hen- 
ry Taylor  must  be  included  with  the  poets  of  this  reign,  al- 
though his  best  work  was  done  before  the  reign  began.  In 
his  work,  clear,  strong  intelligence  prevails  more  than  the 
emotional  and  the  sensuous.  He  makes  himself  a  poet  by 
virtue  of  intellect  and  artistic  judgment;  for  there  really 
do  seem  some  examples  of  a  poet  being  made  and  not  born. 
We  can  hardly  bring  Procter  among  the  Victorian  poets. 
Macaulay's  ringing  verses  are  rather  the  splendid  and  suc- 
cessful tours  de  force  of  a  clever  man,  than  the  genuine  lyr- 
ics of  a  poet.  Arthur  Clough  was  a  man  of  rare  promise, 
whose  lamp  was  extinguished  all  too  soon.  Philip  James 
Bailey  startled  the  world  by  his  "  Festus,"  and  for  a  time 
made  people  believe  that  a  great  new  poet  was  coming;  but 
the  impression  did  not  last,  and  Bailey  proved  to  be  little 
more  than  the  comet  of  a  season.  A  spasmodic  school  which 
sprang  up  after  the  success  of  "Festus,"  and  which  was  led 
by  a  brilliant  young  Scotchman,  Alexander  Smith,  passed 
away  in  a  spasm  as  it  came,  and  is  now  almost  forgotten. 
"  Orion,"  an  epic  poem  by  Richard  H.  Home,  made  a  very 
distinct  mark  upon  the  time.  Home  proved  himself  to  be 
a  sort  of  Landor  manque — or  perhaps  a  connecting  link  be- 
tween the  style  of  Landor  and  that  of  Browning.  The  ear- 
lier part  of  the  reign  was  rich  in  singers;  but  the  names  and 
careers  of  most  of  them  would  serve  rather  to  show  that  the 
poetic  spirit  was  abroad,  and  that  it  sought  expression  in 
all  manner  of  forms,  than  that  there  were  many  poets  to  dis- 
pute the  place  with  Tennyson  and  Browning.  It  is  not  nec- 
essary here  to  record  a  list  of  mere  names.  The  air  was  fill- 
ed with  the  voices  of  minor  singers.  It  was  pleasant  to  lis- 
ten to  their  piping,  and  the  general  effect  may  well  be  com- 
mended ;  but  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  names  of  all  the 
performers  in  an  orchestra  should  be  recorded  for  the  sup- 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN".      FIRST  SURVEY.       547 

posed  gratification  of  a  posterity  which  assuredly  would 
never  stop  to  read  the  list. 

Thirty- six  years  have  passed  away  since  Mr.  Ruskin 
leaped  into  the  literary  arena,  Avith  a  spring  as  bold  and 
startling  as  that  of  Kean  on  the  Kemble- haunted  stage. 
The  little  volume,  so  modest  in  its  appearance  and  self-suffi- 
cient in  its  tone,  which  the  author  defiantly  flung  down  like 
a  gage  of  battle  before  the  world,  was  entitled,  "  Modern 
Painters:  their  superiority  in  the  art  of  Landscape -paint- 
ing to  all  the  Ancient  Masters;  by  a  Graduate  of  Oxford." 
It  was  a  challenge  to  established  beliefs  and  prejudices;  and 
the  challenge  was  delivered  in  the  tone  of  one  who  felt  con- 
fident that  he  could  make  good  his  words  against  any  and 
all  opponents.  If  there  was  one  thing  that  more  than  an- 
other seemed  to  have  been  fixed  and  rooted  in  the  English 
mind,  it  was  that  Claude  and  one  or  two  others  of  the  old 
masters  possessed  the  secret  of  landscape-painting.  When, 
therefore,  a  bold  young  dogmatist  involved  in  one  common 
denunciation  "  Claude,  Gaspar  Poussin,  Salvator  Rosa,  Ruys- 
dael,Paul  Potter,  Canaletto,  and  the  various  Van-somethings 
and  Koek-somethings,  more  especially  and  malignantly  those 
who  have  libelled  the  sea,"  it  was  no  wonder  that  affronted 
authority  raised  its  indignant  voice  and  thundered  at  him. 
Affronted  authority,  however,  gained  little  by  its  thunder. 
The  young  Oxford  Graduate  possessed,  along  with  genius 
and  profound  conviction,  an  imperturbable  and  magnificent 
self-conceit  against  which  the  surges  of  angry  criticism 
dashed  themselves  in  vain.  Mr.  Ruskin  sprang  into  literary 
life  simply  as  a  vindicator  of  the  fame  and  genius  of  Turner. 
But  as  he  went  on  with  his  task  he  found,  or  at  least  he 
convinced  himself,  that  the  vindication  of  the  great  land- 
scape-painter was  essentially  a  vindication  of  all  true  art. 
Still  further  proceeding  with  his  self-imposed  task,  he  per- 
suaded himself  that  the  cause  of  true  art  was  identical  with 
the  cause  of  truth,  and  that  truth,  from  Ruskin's  point  of 
view,  enclosed  in  the  same  rules  and  principles  all  the  mor- 
als, all  the  science,  industry,  and  daily  business  of  life. 
There  fore,  from  an  art-critic  he  became  a  moralist,  a  political 
economist,  a  philosopher,  a  statesman,  a  preacher — anything, 
everything  that  human  intelligence  can  impel  a  man  to  be. 
All  that  he  has  written  since  his  first  appeal  to  the  public 


548  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

has  been  inspired  by  this  conviction  —  that  an  appreciation 
of  the  truth  in  art  reveals  to  him  who  has  it  the  truth  in 
everything.  This  belief  has  been  the  source  of  Air.  Raskin's 
greatest  successes,  and  of  his  most  complete  and  ludicrous 
i'ailures.  It  has  made  him  the  admiration  of  the  world  one 
week,  and  the  object  of  its  placid  pity  or  broad  laughter  the 
next.  A  being  who  could  be  Joan  of  Arc  to-day  and  Vol- 
taire's Pucelle  to-morrow,  would  hardly  exhibit  a  stronger 
psychical  paradox  than  the  eccentric  genius  of  Mr.  Ruskin 
sometimes  illustrates.  But  in  order  to  do  him  justice,  and 
not  to  regard  him  as  a  mere  erratic  utterer  of  eloquent  con- 
tradictions, poured  out  on  the  impulse  of  each  moment's 
new  freak  of  fancy,  we  must  always  bear  in  mind  the  funda- 
mental faith  of  the  man.  Extravagant  as  this  or  that  doc- 
trine may  be,  outrageous  as  to-day's  contradiction  of  yester- 
day's assertion  may  sound,  yet  the  whole  career  is  consist- 
ent with  its  essential  principles  and  beliefs.  It  may  be  fair- 
ly questioned  whether  Mr.  Ruskin  has  any  great  qualities 
but  his  eloquence  and  his  true,  honest  love  of  nature.  As  a 
man  to  stand  up  before  a  society  of  which  one  part  was 
fashionably  languid  and  the  other  part  only  too  busy  and 
greedy,  and  preach  to  it  of  Nature's  immortal  beauty,  and 
of  the  true  way  to  do  her  reverence,  Ruskin  has  and  had  a 
position  of  genuine  dignity.  This  ought  to  be  enough  for 
the  work  and  for  the  praise  of  any  man.  But  the  restless- 
ness of  Ruskin's  temperament,  combined  with  the  extraordi- 
nary self-sufficiency  which  contributed  so  much  to  his  suc- 
cess where  he  was  master  of  a  subject,  sent  him  perpetually 
intruding  into  fields  where  he  was  unfit  to  labor,  and  enter- 
prises which  he  had  no  capacity  to  conduct.  Seldom  has  a 
man  contradicted  himself  so  often,  so  recklessly,  and  so  com- 
placently as  Mr.  Ruskin.  It  is  venturesome  to  call  him  a 
great  critic  even  in  art,  for  he  seldom  expresses  any  opin- 
ion one  day  without  flatly  contradicting  it  the  next.  He  is 
a  great  writer,  as  Rousseau  was — fresh,  eloquent,  audacious, 
writing  out  of  the  fulness  of  the  present  mood,  and  heedless 
how  far  the  impulse  of  to-day  may  contravene  that  of  yes- 
terday. But  as  Rousseau  was  always  faithful  to  his  idea 
of  truth,  so  Ruskin  is  always  faithful  to  Nature.  When  all 
his  errors,  and  paradoxes,  and  contradictions  shall  have  been 
utterly  forgotten,  this  will  remain  to  his  praise.  No  man 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       549 

since  Wordsworth's  brightest  days  did  half  so  much  to  teach 
his  countrymen,  and  those  who  speak  his  language,  how  to 
appreciate  and  honor  that  silent  Nature  "  which  never  did 
betray  the  heart  that  loved  her." 

In  fiction  as  well  as  in  poetry  there  are  two  great  names 
to  be  compared  or  contrasted  when  we  turn  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  earlier  part  of  the  reign.  In  the  very  year  of 
Queen  Victoria's  accession  appeared  the  "Pickwick Papers," 
the  work  of  the  author  who  the  year  before  had  published 
the  "Sketches  by  Boz."  The  public  soon  recognized  the 
fact  that  a  new  and  wonderfully  original  force  had  come 
into  literature.  The  success  of  Charles  Dickens  is  absolute- 
ly unequalled  in  the  history  of  English  fiction.  At  the  sea- 
son of  his  highest  popularity  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  not  so 
popular  an  author.  But  that  happened  to  Dickens  which 
did  not  happen  to  Scott.  When  Dickens  was  at  his  zenith, 
and  when  it  might  have  been  thought  that  any  manner  of  ri- 
valry with  him  was  impossible,  a  literary  man  who  was  no 
longer  young,  who  had  been  working  with  but  moderate  suc- 
cess for  many  years  in  light  literature,  suddenly  took  to  writ- 
ing novels,  and  almost  in  a  moment  stepped  up  to  a  level 
with  the  author  of  "  Pickwick."  During  the  remainder  of 
their  careers  the  two  men  stood  as  nearly  as  possible  on  the 
panic  level.  Dickens  always  remained  by  far  the  more  pop- 
ular of  the  two;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  safely 
paid  that  the  opinion  of  the  literary  world  in  general  was 
inclined  to  favor  Thackeray.  From  the  time  of  the  publi- 
cation of  "Vanity  Fair"  the  two  were  always  put  side  by 
side  for  comparison  or  contrast.  They  have  been  some- 
times likened  to  Fielding  and  Smollett,  but  no  comparison 
could  be  more  misleading  or  less  happy.  Smollett  stands  on 
a  level  distinctly  and  considerably  below  that  of  Fielding; 
but  Dickens  cannot  be  said  to  stand  thus  beneath  Thack- 
eray. If  the  comparison  were  to  hold  at  all,  Thackeray 
must  be  compared  to  Fielding,  for  Fielding  is  not  in  the 
least  like  Dickens ;  but  then  it  must  be  allowed  that  Smol- 
lett wants  many  of  the  higher  qualities  of  the  author  of 
"David  Copperfield."  It  is  natural  that  men  should  com- 
pare Dickens  and  Thackeray ;  but  the  two  will  be  found 
to  be  curiously  unlike  when  once  a  certain  superficial  re- 
semblance censes  to  impress  the  mind.  Their,  ways  of  treat- 


550  A  HISTORY  OF   OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

ing  a  subject  were  not  only  dissimilar  but  were  absolutely 
in  contrast.  They  started,  to  begin  with,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  a  totally  different  philosophy  of  life,  if  that  is  to  be 
called  a  philosophy  which  was  probably  only  the  result  of 
peculiarity  of  temperament  in  each  case.  Dickens  set  out 
on  the  literary  theory  that  in  life  everything  is  better  than 
it  looks;  Thackeray  with  the  impression  that  it  is  worse. 
In  the  one  case  there  was  somewhat  too  much  of  a  mechan- 
ical interpretation  of  everything  for  the  best  in  the  best 
possible  world ;  in  the  other  the  savor  of  cynicism  was  at 
times  a  little  annoying.  As  each  writer  went  on,  the  pecu- 
liarity became  more  and  more  of  a  mannerism.  But  the 
writings  of  Dickens  were  far  more  deeply  influenced  by  his 
peculiarities  of  feeling  or  philosophy  than  those  of  Thacke- 
ray. A  large  share  of  the  admiration  which  is  popularly 
given  to  Dickens  is,  undoubtedly,  a  tribute  to  what  people 
consider  his  cheerful  view  of  life.  In  that,  too,  he  is  espe- 
cially English.  In  this  country  the  artistic  theory  of  France 
and  other  Continental  nations,  borrowed  from  the  esthetic 
principles  of  Greece,  Avhich  accords  the  palm  to  the  artistic 
treatment  rather  than  to  the  subject,  or  the  purpose,  or  the 
way  of  looking  at  things,  has  found  hardly  any  broad  and 
general  acceptation.  The  popularity  of  Dickens  was,  there- 
fore, in  great  measure  due  to  the  fact  that  he  set  forth  life 
in  cheerful  lights  and  colors.  He  had,  of  course,  gifts  of  far 
higher  artistic  value;  he  could  describe  anything  that  he  saw 
with  a  fidelity  which  Balzac  could  not  have  surpassed;  and, 
like  Balzac,  he  had  a  way  of  inspiring  inanimate  objects  with 
a  mystery  and  motive  of  their  own,  which  gave  them  often  a 
weird  and  fascinating  individuality.  But  it  must  be  owned 
that  if  Dickens's  peculiar  "philosophy"  were  effaced  from  his 
works,  the  fame  of  the  author  would  remain  a  very  different 
thing  from  what  it  is  at  the  present  moment.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  would  be  possible  to  cut  out  of  Thackeray  all  his 
little  cynical,  melancholy  sentences,  and  reduce  his  novels  to 
bare  descriptions  of  life  and  character,  without  affecting,  in 
any  sensible  degree,his  influence  on  the  reader  or  his  position 
in  literature.  Thackeray  had  a  marvellously  keen  apprecia- 
tion of  human  motive  and  character  within  certain  limits. 
If  Dickens  could  draw  an  old  quaint  house  or  an  odd  family 
interior  as  faithfully  and  yet  as  picturesquely  as  Balzac,  so, 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN.     FIRST  SURVEY.       551 

on  the  other  hand,  not  Balzac  himself  could  analyze  and  il- 
lustrate the  weaknesses  and  foibles  of  certain  types  of  char- 
acter with  greater  subtlety  of  judgment  and  force  of  exposi- 
tion than  Thackeray.  Dickens  had  little  or  no  knowledge 
of  human  character,  and  evidently  cared,  very  little  about 
the  study.  His  stories  are  fairy  tales  made  credible  by  the 
masterly  realism  with  which  he  described  all  the  surround- 
ings and  accessaries,  the  costumes  and  the  ways  of  his  men 
and  women.  While  we  are  reading  of  a  man  whose  odd  pe- 
culiarities strike  us  with  a  sense  of  reality  as  if  we  had  ob- 
served them  for  ourselves  many  a  time,  while  we  see  him 
surrounded  by  streets  and  houses  which  seem  to  us  rather 
more  real  and  a  hundred  times  more  interesting  than  those 
through  which  we  pass  every  day,  we  are  not  likely  to  ob- 
serve very  quickly,  or  to  take  much  heed  of  the  fact  when 
we  do  observe  it,  that  the  man  acts  on  various  important 
occasions  of  his  life  as  only  people  in  fairy  stories  ever  do 
act.  Thackeray,  on  the  other  hand,  cared  little  for  descrip- 
tions of  externals.  Pie  left  his  readers  to  construct  for  them- 
selves the  greater  part  of  the  surroundings  of  his  person- 
ages from  his  description  of  the  characters  of  the  personages 
themselves.  He  made  us  acquainted  with  the  man  or  wom- 
an in  his  chapters  as  if  we  had  known  him  or  her  all  our 
life;  and  knowing  Pendennis  or  Becky  Sharp,  we  had  no 
difficulty  in  constructing  the  surroundings  of  either  for  our- 
selves. Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  these  two  eminent  authors 
had  not  only  different  ideas  about  life,  but  absolutely  con- 
trasting principles  of  art.  One  worked  from  the  externals 
inward;  the  other  realized  the  unseen,  and  left  the  externals 
to  grow  of  themselves.  Three  great  peculiarities,  however, 
they  shared.  Each  lived  and  wrote  of  and  for  London. 
Dickens  created  for  art  the  London  of  the  middle  and  poor- 
er classes ;  Thackeray  did  the  same  for  the  London  of  the 
upper  class,  and  for  those  who  strive  to  imitate  their  ways. 
Neither  ever  even  attempted  to  describe  a  man  kept  con- 
stantly above  and  beyond  the  atmosphere  of  mere  egotism 
by  some  sustaining  greatness  or  even  intensity  of  purpose. 
In  Dickens,  as  in  Thackeray,  the  emotions  described  are 
those  of  conventional  life  merely.  This  is  not  to  be  said  in 
disparagement  of  either  artist.  It  is  rather  a  tribute  to  an 
artist's  knowledge  of  his  own  capacity  and  sphere  of  work 


552  A  HISTOKY  OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

that  he  only  attempts  to  draw  what  he  thoroughly  under- 
stands. But  it  is  proper  to  remark  of  Dickens  and  of  Thack- 
eray, as  of  Balzac,  that  the  life  they  described  was,  after  all, 
but  the  life  of  a  coterie  or  a  quarter,  and  that  there  existed 
side  by  side  with  their  field  of  work  a  whole  world  of  emo- 
tion, aspiration,  struggle,  defeat,  and  triumph,  of  which  their 
brightest  pages  do  not  give  a  single  suggestion.  This  is 
the  more  curious  to  observe  because  of  the  third  peculiarity 
which  Dickens  and  Thackeray  had  in  common — a  love  for 
the  purely  ideal  and  romantic  in  fiction.  There  are  many 
critics  who  hold  that  Dickens  in  "Barnaby  Rudge"  and  the 
"Tale  of  Two  Cities,"  Thackeray  in  "Esmond,"  exhibited 
powers  which  vindicated  for  their  possessors  a  very  rare  in- 
fusion of  that  higher  poetic  spirit  which  might  have  made 
of  both  something  greater  than  the  painters  of  the  manners 
of  a  day  and  a  class.  But  to  paint  the  manners  of  a  day 
and  a  class  as  Dickens  and  Thackeray  have  done  is  to  de- 
serve fame  and  the  gratitude  of  posterity.  The  age  of  Vic- 
toria may  claim  in  this  respect  an  equality,  at  least,  with 
that  of  the  reign  which  produced  Fielding  and  Smollett; 
for  if  there  are  some  who  would  demand  for  Fielding  a 
higher  place,  on  the  whole,  than  can  be  given  either  to  Dick- 
ens or  to  Thackeray,  there  are  not  many,  on  the  other  hand, 
who  would  not  say  that  either  Dickens  or  Thackeray  is  dis- 
tinctly superior  to  Smollett.  The  age  must  claim  a  high 
place  in  art  which  could  in  one  department  alone  produce 
two  such  competitors.  Their  effect  upon  their  time  was 
something  marvellous.  People  talked  Dickens  or  thought 
Thackeray. 

Passion,  it  will  be  seen,  counted  for  little  in  the  works  of 
Dickens  and  Thackeray.  Dickens,  indeed,  could  draw  a  con- 
ventionally or  dramatically  wicked  man  with  much  power 
and  impressiveness ;  and  Thackeray  could  suggest  certain 
forms  of  vice  with  wonderful  delicacy  and  yet  vividness. 
But  the  passions  which  are  common  to  all  human  natures  in 
their  elementary  moods  made  but  little  play  in  the  novels 
of  either  writer.  Both  were,  in  this  respect,  for  all  their 
originality  and  genius  in  other  ways,  highly  and  even  ex- 
clusively conventional.  There  was  apparently  a  sort  of 
understanding  in  the  mind  of  each — indeed  Thackeray  has 
admitted  as  much  in  his  preface  to  "Pendennis" — that  men 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST  SURVEY.       553 

and  women  were  not  to  be  drawn  as  men  and  women  are 
known  to  be,  but  with  certain  reserves  to  suit  conventional 
etiquette.  It  is  somewhat  curious  that  the  one  only  novel 
writer  who  during  the  period  we  are  now  considering  came 
into  any  real  rivalry  with  them,  was  one  who  depended  on 
passion  altogether  for  her  material  and  her  success.  The 
novels  of  a  young  woman,  Charlotte  Bronte,  compelled  all 
English  society  into  a  recognition  not  alone  of  their  own 
sterling  power  and  genius,  but  also  of  the  fact  that  profound 
and  passionate  emotion  was  still  the  stuff  out  of  which  great 
fiction  could  be  constructed.  "Exultations,  agonies,  and 
love,  and  man's  unconquerable  mind,"  were  taken  by  Char- 
lotte Bronte  as  the  matter  out  of  which  her  art  was  to  pro- 
duce its  triumphs.  The  novels  which  made  her  fame,  "Jane 
Eyre "  and  "  Villette,"  are  positively  aflame  with  passion 
and  pain.  They  have  little  variety.  They  make  hardly  any 
pretence  to  accurate  drawing  of  ordinary  men  and  women 
in  ordinary  life,  or,  at  all  events,  under  ordinary  conditions. 
The  authoress  had  little  of  the  gift  of  the  mere  story-teller ; 
and  her  own  peculiar  powers  were  exerted  sometimes  with 
indifferent  success.  The  familiar  on  whom  she  depended 
for  her  inspiration  would  not  always  come  at  call.  She  had 
little  genuine  relish  for  beauty,  except  the  beauty  of  a 
weird  melancholy  and  of  decay.  But  when  she  touched  the 
chord  of  elementary  human  emotion  with  her  best  skill, 
then  it  was  impossible  for  her  audience  not  to  feel  that 
they  were  under  the  spell  of  a  power  rare,  indeed,  in  our 
well-ordered  days.  The  absolute  sincerity  of  the  author's 
expression  of  feeling  lent  it  great  part  of  its  strength  and 
charm.  Nothing  was  ever  said  by  her  because  it  seemed  to 
society  the  right  sort  of  thing  to  say.  She  told  a  friend  that 
she  felt  sure  that  "  Jane  Eyre  "  would  have  an  effect  on  read- 
ers in  general  because  it  had  so  great  an  effect  on  herself. 
It  would  be  possible  to  argue  that  the  great  strength  of  the 
books  lay  in  their  sincerity  alone ;  that  Charlotte  Bronte 
was  not  so  much  a  woman  of  extraordinary  genius  as  a  wom- 
an who  looked  her  own  feelings  fairly  in  the  face,  and  paint- 
ed them  as  she  saw  them.  But  the  capacity  to  do  this  would 
surely  be  something  which  we  could  not  better  describe  than 
by  the  word  genius.  Charlotte  Bronte  was  far  from  be- 
ing an  artist  of  fulfilled  power.  She  is  rather  to  be  regard- 
I.— 24 


554  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN   TIMES. 

ed  as  one  who  gave  evidence  of  extraordinary  gifts,  which 
might  with  time  and  care,  and  under  happier  artistic  aus- 
pices, have  been  turned  to  such  account  as  would  have  made 
for  her  a  fame  with  the  very  chiefs  of  her  tribe.  She  died 
at  an  age  hardly  more  mature  than  that  at  which  Thackeray 
won  his  first  distinct  literary  success;  much  earlier  than  the 
age  at  which  some  of  our  greatest  novelists  brought  forth 
their  first  completed  novels.  But  she  left  a  very  deep  im- 
pression on  her  time,  and  the  time  that  has  come  and  is  com- 
ing after  her.  No  other  hand  in  the  age  of  Queen  Victoria 
lias  dealt  with  human  emotion  so  powerfully  and  so  truthful- 
ly. Hers  are  not  cheerful  novels.  A  cold,  gray,  mournful 
atmosphere  hangs  over  them.  One  might  imagine  that  the 
shadow  of  an  early  death  is  forecast  on  them.  They  love  to 
linger  among  the  glooms  of  nature,  to  haunt  her  darkling 
wintry  twilights,  to  study  her  stormy  sunsets,  to  link  man's 
destiny  and  his  hopes,  fears,  and  passions  somehow  with  the 
glare  and  gloom  of  storm  and  darkness,  and  to  read  the  sym- 
bols of  his  fate,  as  the  foredoomed  and  passion-wasted  An- 
tony did,  in  the  cloud-masses  that  are  "  black  vesper's  pa- 
geants." The  supernatural  had  a  constant  vague  charm  for 
Charlotte  Bronte, as  the  painful  had.  Man  was  to  her  a  being 
torn  between  passionate  love  and  the  more  ignoble  impulses 
and  ambitions  and  common-day  occupations  of  life.  Woman 
was  a  being  of  equal  passion,  still  more  sternly  and  cruelly 
doomed  to  repression  and  renunciation.  It  was  a  strange 
fact  that  in  the  midst  of  the  splendid  material  successes 
and  the  quietly  triumphant  intellectual  progress  of  this  most 
prosperous  and  well-ordered  age,  when  even  in  its  poetry 
and  its  romance  passion  was  systematically  toned  down  and 
put  in  thrall  to  good  taste  and  propriety,  this  young  writer 
should  have  suddenly  come  out  with  her  books  all  thrilling 
with  emotion,  and  all  protesting  in  the  strongest  practical 
manner  against  the  theory  that  the  loves  and  hates  of  men 
and  women  had  been  tamed  by  the  process  of  civilization. 
Perhaps  the  very  novelty  of  the  apparition  was,  in  great 
measure,  a  part  of  its  success.  Charlotte  Bronte  did  not,  in- 
deed, influence  the  general  public,  or  even  the  literai-y  pub- 
lic., to  anything  like  the  same  extent  that  Thackeray  and 
Dickens  did.  She  appeared  and  passed  away  almost  in  a 
moment.  As  Miss  Martineau  said  of  her,  she  stole  like  a 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       555 
shadow  into  literature,  and  then  became  a  shadow  again. 

'  O 

But  she  struck  very  deeply  into  the  heart  of  the  time.  If 
her  writings  were  only,  as  has  been  said  of  them,  a  cry  of 
pain,  yet  they  were  such  a  cry  as,  once  heard,  lingers  and 
echoes  in  the  mind  forever  after.  Godwin  declared  that  he 
would  write  in  "Caleb  Williams"  a  book  which  would  leave 
no  man  who  read  it  the  same  that  he  was  before.  Some- 
thing not  unlike  this  might  be  said  of  "Jane  Eyre."  No  one 
who  read  it  was  exactly  the  same  that  he  had  been  before 
he  opened  its  weird  and  wonderful  pages. 

No  man  could  well  have  made  more  of  his  gifts  than  Lord 
Lytton.  Before  the  coming  up  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
he  stood  above  all  living  English  novelists.  Perhaps  this 
is  rather  to  the  reproach  of  the  English  fiction  of  the  day 
than  to  the  renown  of  Lord  Lytton.  But  even  after  Dick- 
ens and  Thackeray  and  Charlotte.  Bronte,  and  later  and  not 
less  powerful  and  original  writers  had  appeared  in  the  same 
field,  he  still  held  a  place  of  great  mark  in  literature.  That 
he  was  not  a  man  of  genius  is,  perhaps,  conclusively  proved 
by  the  fact  that  he  was  able  so  readily  to  change  his  style 
to  suit  the  tastes  of  each  day.  He  began  by  writing  of  fops 
and  roues  of  a  time  now  almost  forgotten ;  then  he  made 
heroes  of  highwaymen  and  murderers;  afterward  he  tried 
the  philosophic  and  mildly  didactic  style ;  then  he  turned  to 
mysticism  and  spiritualism  ;  later  still  he  wrote  of  the  French 
Second  Empire.  Whatever  he  tried  to  do  he  did  well.  Be- 
sides his  novels,  he  wrote  plays  and  poems ;  and  his  plays 
are  among  the  very  few  modern  productions  which  manage 
to  keep  the  stage.  He  played,  too,  and  with  much  success, 
at  being  a  statesman  and  an  orator.  Not  Demosthenes  him- 
self had  such  difficulties  of  articulation  to  contend  against 
in  the  beginning;  and  Demosthenes  conquered  his  difficul- 
ties, while  some  of  those  in  the  way  of  Lord  Lytton  proved 
unconquerable.  Yet  Lord  Lytton  did  somehow  contrive  to 
become  a  great  speaker,  and  to  seem  occasionally  like  a 
great  orator  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  at  the  very 
least  a  superb  phrase-maker;  and  he  could  turn  to  account 
every  scrap  of  knowledge  in  literature,  art,  or  science  which 
he  happened  to  possess.  His  success  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  exactly  like  his  success  in  romance  and  the  drama. 
He  threw  himself  into  competition  with  men  of  far  higher 


556  A  HISTOKY   OF   OUll   OWN   TIMES. 

original  gifts,  and  he  made  so  good  a  show  of  contesting 
with  them  that  in  the  minds  of  many  the  victory  was  not 
clearly  with  his  antagonists.  There  was  always,  for  exam- 
ple, a  considerable  class,  even  among  educated  persons,  who 
maintained  that  Lytton  was,  in  his  way,  quite  the  peer  of 
Thackeray  and  Dickens.  His  plays,  or  some  of  them,  ob- 
tained a  popularity  only  second  to  those  of  Shakspeare;  and 
although  nobody  cared  to  read  them,  yet  people  were  al- 
ways found  to  go  and  look  at  them.  When  Lytton  went 
into  the  House  of  Commons  for  the  second  time  he  found 
audiences  which  were  occasionally  tempted  to  regard  him 
as  the  rival  of  Gladstone  and  Bright.  Not  a  few  persons 
saw  in  all  this  only  a  sort  of  superb  charlatanerie ;  and  in- 
deed it  is  certain  that  no  man  ever  made  and  kept  a  genu- 
ine success  in  so  many  different  fields  as  those  in  which  Lord 
Lytton  tried  and  seemed  to  succeed.  But  he  had  splendid 
qualities;  he  had  everything  short  of  genius.  He  had  in- 
domitable patience,  inexhaustible  power  of  self-culture,  and 
a  capacity  for  assimilating  the  floating  ideas  of  the  hour 
which  supplied  the  place  of  originality.  He  borrowed  from 
the  poet  the  knack  of  poetical  expression,  and  from  the  dram- 
atist the  trick  of  construction  ;  from  the  Byronic  time  its 
professed  scorn  for  the  false  gods  of  the  world ;  and  from 
the  more  modern  period  of  popular  science  and  sham  mys- 
ticism its  extremes  of  materialism  and  magic ;  and  of  these 
and  various  other  borrowings  he  made  up  an  article  which 
no  one  else  could  have  constructed  out  of  the  same  materi- 
als. He  was  not  a  great  author;  but  he  was  a  great  litera- 
ry man.  Mr.  Disraeli's  novels  belong  in  some  measure  to 
the  school  of'Pelham"  and  "Godolphin."  But  it  should 
be  said  that  Mr.  Disraeli's  "Vivian  Grey"  was  published  be- 
fore "Pelham"  made  its  appearance.  In  all  that  belongs  to 
political  life  Mr.  Disraeli's  novels  are  far  superior  to  those  of 
Lord  Lytton.  We  have  nothing  in  our  literature  to  com- 
pare with  some  of  the  best  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  novels  for  light 
political  satire,  and  for  easy,  accurate  characterization  of  po- 
litical cliques  and  personages.  But  all  else  in  Disraeli's  nov- 
els is  sham.  The  sentiment,  the  poetry,  the  philosophy — all 
these  are  sham.  They  have  not  half  the  appearance  of  re- 
ality about  them  that  Lytton  has  contrived  to  give  to  his 
efforts  of  the  same  kind.  In  one  at  least  of  Disraeli's  latest 


LITERATURE   OF   THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       557 

novels  the  political  sketches  and  satirizing  became  sham 
also. 

"Alton  Locke"  was  published  nearly  thirty  years  ago. 
Then  Charles  Kingsley  became  to  most  boys  in  Great  Brit- 
ain who  read  books  at  all  a  sort  of  living  embodiment  of 
chivalry,  liberty,  and  a  revolt  against  the  established  order 
of  class-oppression  in  so  many  spheres  of  our  society.  For 
a  long  time  he  continued  to  be  the  chosen  hero  of  young 
men  with  the  youthful  spirit  of  revolt  in  them,  with  dreams 
of  Republics  and  ideas  about  the  equality  of  man.  Later  on 
he  commanded  other  admiration  for  other  qualities,  for  the 
championship  of  slave  systems,  of  oppression,  and  the  iron 
reign  of  mere  force.  But  though  Charles  Kingsley  always 
held  a  high  place  somewhere  in  popular  estimation,  he  is  not 
to  be  rated  very  highly  as  an  author.  He  described  glowing 
scenery  admirably,  and  he  rang  the  changes  vigorously  on 
his  two  or  three  ideas — the  muscular  Englishman,  the  glory 
of  the  Elizabethan  discoveries,  and  so  on.  He  was  a  scholar, 
and  he  wrote  verses  which  sometimes  one  is  on  the  point  of 
mistaking  for  poetry,  so  much  of  the  poet's  feeling  have  they 
in  them.  He  did  a  great  many  things  very  cleverly.  Per- 
haps if  he  had  done  less  he  might  have  done  better.  Human 
capacity  is  limited.  It  is  not  given  to  mortal  to  be  a  great 
preacher,  a  great  philosopher,  a  great  scholar,  a  great  poet,  a 
great  historian,  a  great  novelist,  and  an  indefatigable  country 
parson.  Charles  Kingsley  never  seems  to  have  made  up  his 
mind  for  which  of  these  callings  to  go  in  especially;  and  be- 
ing, with  all  his  versatility,  not  at  all  many-sided,  but  strictly 
one-sided  and  almost  one-ideaed,  the  result  was,  that  while 
touching  success  at  many  points  he  absolutely  mastered  it 
at  none.  Since  his  novel  "Westward  Ho  !"  he  never  add- 
ed anything  substantial  to  his  reputation.  All  this  acknowl- 
edged, however,  it  must  still  be  owned  that  failing  in  this, 
that,  and  the  other  attempt,  and  never  achieving  any  real  and 
enduring  success,  Charles  Kingsley  was  an  influence  and  a 
man  of  mark  in  the  Victorian  Age. 

Perhaps  a  word  ought  to  be  said  of  the  rattling  romances 
of  Irish  electioneering,  love-making,  and  fighting,  which  set 
people  reading  "Charles  O'Malley"  and  "JackHinton,"  even 
when  "Pickwick"  was  still  a  novelty.  Charles  Lever  had 
wonderful  animal  spirits  and  a  broad,  bright  humor.  He  was 


558  A   HISTORY   OF   OUR   OWN  TIMES. 

quite  genuine  in  his  way.  He  afterward  changed  his  style 
completely,  and  with  much  success ;  and  will  be  found  in 
the  later  part  of  the  period  holding  just  the  same  relative 
place  as  in  the  earlier,  just  behind  the  foremost  men,  but  in 
manner  so  different  that  he  might  be  a  new  writer  who  had 
never  read  a  line  of  the  roistering  adventures  of  Light  Dra- 

™  o 

goons  which  were  popular  when  Charles  Lever  first  gave 
them  to  the  world.  There  was  nothing  great  about  Lever, 
but  the  literature  of  the  Victorian  period  would  not  be  quite 
all  that  we  know  it  without  him.  There  were  many  other 
popular  novelists  during  the  period  we  have  passed  over, 
some  in  their  day  more  popular  than  either  Thackeray  or 
Charlotte  Bronte.  Many  of  us  can  remember,  without  being 
too  much  ashamed  of  the  fact,  that  there  were  early  days 
when  Mr.  James  and  his  cavaliers  and  his  chivalric  advent- 
ures gave  nearly  as  much  delight  as  Walter  Scott  could  have 
given  to  the  youth  of  a  preceding  generation.  But  Walter 
Scott  is  with  us  still,  young  and  old,  and  poor  James  is  gone. 
His  once  famous  solitary  horseman  has  ridden  away  into 
actual  solitude,  and  the  shades  of  night  have  gathered  over 
his  heroic  form. 

The  founding  of  Punch  drew  together  a  host  of  clever 
young  writers,  some  of  whom  made  a  really  deep  mark  on 
the  literature  of  their  time,  and  the  combined  influence  of 
whom  in  this  artistic  and  literary  undertaking  was,  on  the 
whole,  decidedly  healthy.  Thackeray  was  by  far  the  great- 
est of  the  regular  contributors  to  Punch  in  its  earlier  days. 
But  "The  Song  of  the  Shirt "  appeared  in  its  pages,  and 
some  of  the  brightest  of  Douglas  Jerrold's  writings  made 
their  appearance  there.  Punch  was  a  thoroughly  English 
production.  It  had  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  the 
comic  periodicals  of  Paris.  It  ignored  absolutely  and  of  set 
purpose  the  whole  class  of  subjects  which  make  up  three- 
fourths  of  the  stock  in  trade  of  a  French  satirist.  The  es- 
capades of  husbands  and  the  infidelities  of  wives  form  the 
theme  of  by  far  the  greater  number  of  the  humorous  sketch- 
es with  pen  or  pencil  in  Parisian  comicalities.  Punch  kept 
altogether  aloof  from  such  unsavory  subjects.  It  had  an 
advantage,  of  course,  which  was  habitually  denied  to  the 
French  papers ;  it  had  unlimited  freedom  of  political  satire 
and  caricature.  Politics  and  the  more  trivial  troubles  and 


LITERATURE   OF  THE   REIGN.      FIRST   SURVEY.       559 

trials  of  social  life  gave  subjects  to  Punch.  The  inequali- 
ties of  class,  and  the  struggles  of  ambitious  and  vain  persons 
to  get  into  circles  higher  than  their  own,  or  at  least  to  imi- 
tate their  manners — these  supplied  for  Punch  the  place  of 
the  class  of  topics  on  which  French  papers  relied  when  they 
had  to  deal  with  the  domestic  life  of  the  nation.  Punch 
started  by  being  somewhat  fiercely  radical,  but  gradually 
toned  away  into  a  sort  of  intelligent  and  respectable  Con- 
servatism. Its  artistic  sketches  were  from  first  to  last  ad- 
mirable. Some  men  of  true  genius  wrought  for  it  with  the 
pencil  as  others  did.  with  the  pen.  Doyle,  Leech,  and  Ten- 
niel  were  men  of  whom  any  school  of  art  might  well  be 
proud.  A  remarkable  sobriety  of  style  was  apparent  in  all 
their  humors.  Of  later  years  caricature  has  had  absolutely 
no  place  in  the  illustrations  to  Punch.  The  satire  is  quiet, 
delicate,  and  no  doubt  superficial.  It  is  a  satire  of  manners, 
dress,  and  social  ways  altogether.  There  is  justice  in  the 
criticism  that  of  late,  more  especially,  the  pages  of  Punch 
give  no  idea  whatever  of  the  emotions  of  the  English  people. 
There  is  no  suggestion  of  grievance,  of  bitterness,  of  passion, 
or  pain.  It  is  all  made  up  of  the  pleasures  and  annoyances 
of  the  kind  of  life  which  is  enclosed  in  a  garden  party.  But 
it  must  be  said  that  Punch  has  thus  always  succeeded  in 
maintaining  a  good,  open,  convenient,  neutral  ground,  where 
young  men  and  maidens,  girls  and  boys,  elderly  politicians 
and  staid  matrons,  law,  trade,  science,  all  sects  and  creeds, 
may  safely  and  pleasantly  mingle.  It  is  not  so,  to  be  sure, 
that  great  satire  is  wrought.  A  Swift  or  a  Juvenal  is  not 
thus  to  be  brought  out.  But  a  votary  of  the  present  would 
have  his  answer  simple  and  conclusive :  "We  live  in  the  age 
of  Punch;  we  do  not  live  in  the  age  of  Juvenal  or  Swift. 


END    OF    VOL.   I. 


DATE  DUE 


GAYLORD 


